jQuery: On form input focus, show div. hide div on blur (with a caveat)

Question

Hi,

I am able to make a hidden div show/hide when an input field is in focus/blur using the following code:

  $('#example').focus(function() {
    $('div.example').css('display','block');
  }).blur(function() {
    $('div.example').fadeOut('medium');
  });

The problem is I want div.example to continue to be visible when the user is interacting within this div. E.g. click, or highlighting the text etc. within div.example. However div.example fades out whenever the input is not in focus and the mouse is interacting with elements within the div.

The html code for the input and div elements is as follows:

<p>
<label for="example">Text:</label>
<input id="example" name="example" type="text" maxlength="100" />
<div class="example">Some text...<br /><br />More text...</div>
</p>

How do I make it such that the div.example only disappears when the user clicks outside the input and/or div.example? I tried experimenting with focusin/focusout to check the focus on <p> but that didn't work either.

Would it matter that div.example is positioned directly below the input field #example using jQuery? The code that does that is as follows:

var fieldExample = $('#example');
$('div.example').css("position","absolute");
$('div.example').css("left", fieldExample.offset().left);
$('div.example').css("top", fieldExample.offset().top + fieldExample.outerHeight());

My apologies if this has been asked before, but the many show/hide div questions I read does not cover this. Thanks for your advice. :)

Answer 1

If you track the focusin event on the document since focusin bubbles then you can figure out if the new thing in focus is "outside" and if so do something about it. This will work for both clicks and tabbing.

$('#example').focus(function() {
    var div = $('div.example').show();
    $(document).bind('focusin.example click.example',function(e) {
        if ($(e.target).closest('.example, #example').length) return;
        $(document).unbind('.example');
        div.fadeOut('medium');
    });
});
$('div.example').hide();​

Updated the code to use both the focusin and click event to decide if to hide the div.example. I am using namespaced events so that I can call unbind('.example') to unbind both of them.

Example: http://jsfiddle.net/9XmVT/11/

Side Note Change your css positioning code to only call the css method once:

$('div.example').css({
    "position":"absolute",
    "left": fieldExample.offset().left,
    "top": fieldExample.offset().top + fieldExample.outerHeight()
});

Example with using the absolute positioned div: http://jsfiddle.net/9XmVT/14/

UPDATE

Ben Alman just updated his clickoutside event and converted it to handle alot of *outside events. http://benalman.com/projects/jquery-outside-events-plugin/

Would let you do something like this:

$('#example').focus(function() {
    $('div.example').show().bind('focusoutside clickoutside',function(e) {
        $(this).unbind('focusoutside clickoutside').fadeOut('medium');
    });
});
$('div.example').hide();

Answer 2

You could use a timer to introduce a slight delay, and stop the timer if there's a focus on the field or a click on the div:

var timer = false ;
$('#example').focus(function() {
    if (timer)
        clearTimeout(timer);
    $('div.example').css('display','block');

  }).blur(function() {

    if (timer)
        clearTimeout(timer);

    timer = setTimeout(function(){
            $('div.example').fadeOut('medium');
        },500);

  });

$('div.example').click(function(){
    if (timer)
        clearTimeout(timer);
})

Answer 3

Hi Peter, I noticed that your code doesn't work in Jquery 1.2.6 which is what comes stock with Drupal. I'm guessing this is due to the .closest in your code? Is there an alternative that I could use, maybe .parents?

I'm referring to this line: if ($(e.target).closest('.example, #example').length) return;

Could you also explain how that if statement works? Maybe add some more inline documentation?

Thanks -Glenn