How to find event listeners on a DOM node?

Question

I have a page where some event listeners are attached to input boxes and select boxes. Is there a way to find out which event listeners are observing a particular DOM node and for what event?

Events are attached using 1) prototype's Event.observe 2) DOM's addEventListener 3) as element attribute element.onclick

Answer 1

It depends on how the events are attached. For illustration presume we have the following click handler:

var handler = function() { alert('clicked!') };

We're going to attach it to our element using different methods, some which allow inspection and some that don't.

Method A) single event handler

element.onclick = handler;
// inspect
alert(element.onclick); // alerts "function() { alert('clicked!') }"

Method B) multiple event handlers

if(element.addEventListener) { // DOM standard
    element.addEventListener('click', handler, false)
} else if(element.attachEvent) { // IE
    element.attachEvent('onclick', handler)
}
// cannot inspect element to find handlers

Method C): jQuery

$(element).click(handler);

• 1.3.x

  // inspect
  var clickEvents = $(element).data("events").click;
  jQuery.each(clickEvents, function(key, value) {
      alert(value) // alerts "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
  })
  

• 1.4.x (stores the handler inside an object)

  // inspect
  var clickEvents = $(element).data("events").click;
  jQuery.each(clickEvents, function(key, handlerObj) {
      alert(handlerObj.handler) // alerts "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
      // also available: handlerObj.type, handlerObj.namespace
  })
  

^{(See jQuery.fn.data and jQuery.data)}

Method D): Prototype (messy)

$(element).observe('click', handler);

• 1.5.x

  // inspect
  Event.observers.each(function(item) {
      if(item[0] == element) {
          alert(item[2]) // alerts "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
      }
  })
  

• 1.6 to 1.6.0.3, inclusive (got very difficult here)

  // inspect. "_eventId" is for < 1.6.0.3 while 
  // "_prototypeEventID" was introduced in 1.6.0.3
  var clickEvents = Event.cache[element._eventId || (element._prototypeEventID || [])[0]].click;
  clickEvents.each(function(wrapper){
      alert(wrapper.handler) // alerts "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
  })
  

• 1.6.1 (little better)

  // inspect
  var clickEvents = element.getStorage().get('prototype_event_registry').get('click');
  clickEvents.each(function(wrapper){
      alert(wrapper.handler) // alerts "function() { alert('clicked!') }"
  })
  

Answer 2

If you have Firebug, you can use console.dir(object or array) to print a nice tree in the console log of any javascript scalar, array, or object. Try: console.dir(clickEvents); or console.dir(window);

Answer 3

If you just need to inspect what's happening on a page, you might try the Visual Event bookmarklet.