How to cancel onblur event of a control in javascript?

Question

Hi,

I am transferring the focus to a control on onblur event of a dropdown, the focus is transferred to the desired control and also the onblur event written for that control is getting executed which I don't want. How do I prevent this from happening?

Thanks
Kishore

Answer 1

If you set the focus while focus is already being set, you can expect all kinds of odd events to fire. The issue isn't specific to Javascript; it happens on every GUI I've ever worked with. You can't reliably stop the events from firing, and you probably won't get the same ones in the same order if you try a different browser or run on a different OS.

I've always used a boolean variable as a flag to note whether I'm in the middle of setting the focus myself, and quietly return from onblur() and the like when that flag is set. Something like

var isFocusGettingMessedWith;
...
isFocusGettingMessedWith = true;
someControl.focus();
isFocusGettingMessedWith = false;
...
function someControl_onblur(event) {
    if (!isFocusGettingMessedWith) { /* do something */ }
}
function otherControl_onblur(event) {
    if (!isFocusGettingMessedWith) { /* do something */ }
}

This approach has worked reliably on every language/platform combination where I've had cause to use it.