Click outside menu to close in jquery

Question

So I have a drop-down menu that shows on a click, as per business requirements. The menu becomes hidden again after you mouse away from it.

But now I am being asked to have it stay in place until user clicks anywhere on the document. How can this be accomplished?

This is a simplified version of what I have now:

$(document).ready(function() {
  $("ul.opMenu li").click(function(){
   $('#MainOptSubMenu',this).css('visibility', 'visible');
  });

  $("ul.opMenu li").mouseleave(function(){
      $('#MainOptSubMenu',this).css('visibility', 'hidden');
  });
});



<ul  class="opMenu">
  <li id="footwo" class="">
    <span id="optImg" style="display: inline-block;"> <img src="http://localhost.vmsinfo.com:8002/insight/images/options-hover2.gif"/&gt; </span>
      <ul id="MainOptSubMenu" style="visibility: hidden; top: 25px; border-top: 0px solid rgb(217, 228, 250); background-color: rgb(217, 228, 250); padding-bottom: 15px;">
        <li>some</li>
       <li>nav</li>
       <li>links</li>
       </ul>
    </li>
</ul> 

I tried something like this $('document[id!=MainOptSubMenu]').click(function() thinking it would trigger on anything that wasnt the menu, but it didnt work.

Answer 1

Take a look at the approach this question used:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/152975/how-to-detect-a-click-outside-an-element

Attach a click event to the document body which closes the window. Attach a separate click event to the window which stops propagation to the document body.

$('body').click(function() {
  //Hide the menus if visible
});

$('#menucontainer').click(function(event){
    event.stopPropagation();
});

Answer 2

2 options that you can investigate:

• On showing of the menu, place a large empty DIV behind it covering up the rest of the page and give that an on-click event to close the menu (and itself). This is akin to the methods used with lightboxes where clicking on the background closes the lightbox
• On showing of the menu, attach a one-time click event handler on the body that closes the menu. You use jQuery's '.one()' for this.

Answer 3

If using a plugin is ok in you case, then I suggest Ben Alman's clickoutside plugin located here:

its usage is as simple as this:

$('#menu').bind('clickoutside', function (event) {
    $(this).hide();
});

hope this helps.