How to stop event propagation with inline onclick attribute?

Question

Consider the following:

<div onclick="alert('you clicked the header')" class="header">
  <span onclick="alert('you clicked inside the header');">something inside the header</span>
</div>

How can I make it so that when the user clicks the span, it does not fire the div's click event?

Ochlocracy

Answer 1

Use event.stopPropagation().

<span onclick="event.stopPropagation(); alert('you clicked inside the header');">something inside the header</span>

For IE: window.event.cancelBubble = true

<span onclick="window.event.cancelBubble = true; alert('you clicked inside the header');">something inside the header</span>

Xyloid

There's no such thing as the event object in FireFox. – Threnody

The event object is a parameter of the callback. Actually, there is no such thing as the event object in IE because this object is accessible through window.event instead of being a parameter of the function :-) – Primrosa

This is just wrong - inline onclick handlers don't get the event passed as an argument. Correct solution is Gareths, below. – Wandering

In Firefox, you can have access to a variable event in inline script, but window.event is not available. <div onclick="alert(event);"></div> – Internalize

event seems to be available in inline events in IOS Safari as well. – Amphioxus

Maybe you confused with the function provided by jQuery? – Delmardelmer

it seems, you muse use event.stopPropagation(). if you change event to any other parameter name, such as e, it can not work. Does anyone known why? – Chinquapin

Default behaviours, such as clicks on links are not prevented by Event.stopPropagation(). Source: MDN Event.stopPropagation() – Fictionist

Answer 2

There are two ways to get the event object from inside a function:

1. The first argument, in a W3C-compliant browser (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, IE9+)
2. The window.event object in Internet Explorer (<=8)

If you need to support legacy browsers that don't follow the W3C recommendations, generally inside a function you would use something like the following:

function(e) {
  var event = e || window.event;
  [...];
}

which would check first one, and then the other and store whichever was found inside the event variable. However in an inline event handler there isn't an e object to use. In that case you have to take advantage of the arguments collection which is always available and refers to the complete set of arguments passed to a function:

onclick="var event = arguments[0] || window.event; [...]"

However, generally speaking you should be avoiding inline event handlers if you need to to anything complicated like stopping propagation. Writing your event handlers separately and the attaching them to elements is a much better idea in the medium and long term, both for readability and maintainability.

Lovelady

From an inline listener, you can pass the event object like: onclick="foo(event)", then in the function function foo(event){/* do stuff with event */}. This works in both IE and W3C event models. – Saloop

That "lesser or equal to eight" is somewhat...ambiguous. – Delmardelmer

this doesn't actually answer the question. – Cohn

neat answer to a different question. :-/ – Sexism

To avoid browsers complaining about multiple initializations of variable "event", you could use that: onclick="(arguments[0] || window.event).stopPropagation();". – Tabu

Answer 3

Keep in mind that window.event is not supported in FireFox, and therefore it must be something along the lines of:

e.cancelBubble = true

Or, you can use the W3C standard for FireFox:

e.stopPropagation();

If you want to get fancy, you can do this:

function myEventHandler(e)
{
    if (!e)
      e = window.event;

    //IE9 & Other Browsers
    if (e.stopPropagation) {
      e.stopPropagation();
    }
    //IE8 and Lower
    else {
      e.cancelBubble = true;
    }
}

Threnody

And to make it work, one needs to call this like this: <div onclick="myEventHandler(event);"> – Palimpsest

It could be "event || window.event". – Subcelestial

if (e.cancelBubble) don't looks right to me, you set it to true if it's already true – Egotism

e.cancelBubble returns false in IE! It can't reach the e.cancelBubble = true; instruction. Use SoftwareARM's condition instead!! – Solberg

Answer 4

Use this function, it will test for the existence of the correct method.

function disabledEventPropagation(event)
{
   if (event.stopPropagation){
       event.stopPropagation();
   }
   else if(window.event){
      window.event.cancelBubble=true;
   }
}

Egan

Answer 5

I had the same issue - js error box in IE - this works fine in all browsers as far as I can see (event.cancelBubble=true does the job in IE)

onClick="if(event.stopPropagation){event.stopPropagation();}event.cancelBubble=true;"

Depend

Inline script. It does answer the question – Prickly

Answer 6

This worked for me

<script>
function cancelBubble(e) {
 var evt = e ? e:window.event;
 if (evt.stopPropagation)    evt.stopPropagation();
 if (evt.cancelBubble!=null) evt.cancelBubble = true;
}
</script>

<div onclick="alert('Click!')">
  <div onclick="cancelBubble(event)">Something inside the other div</div>
</div>

Kentiggerma

Are you sure that this exact code snippet worked for you? Because it looks like there is a string quoting issue in the onclick handler of the outer div... ?! – Lymphatic

Answer 7

For ASP.NET web pages (not MVC), you can use Sys.UI.DomEvent object as wrapper of native event.

<div onclick="event.stopPropagation();" ...

or, pass event as a parameter to inner function:

<div onclick="someFunction(event);" ...

and in someFunction:

function someFunction(event){
    event.stopPropagation(); // here Sys.UI.DomEvent.stopPropagation() method is used
    // other onclick logic
}

Aigneis

Answer 8

I cannot comment because of Karma so I write this as whole answer: According to the answer of Gareth (var e = arguments[0] || window.event; [...]) I used this oneliner inline on the onclick for a fast hack:

<div onclick="(arguments[0] || window.event).stopPropagation();">..</div>

I know it's late but I wanted to let you know that this works in one line. The braces return an event which has the stopPropagation-function attached in both cases, so I tried to encapsulate them in braces like in an if and....it works. :)

Triolet

Answer 9

According to this page, in IE you need:

event.cancelBubble = true

Hertahertberg

Answer 10

Use separate handler, say:

function myOnClickHandler(th){
//say let t=$(th)
}

and in html do this:

<...onclick="myOnClickHandler(this); event.stopPropagation();"...>

Or even :

function myOnClickHandler(e){
  e.stopPropagation();
}

for:

<...onclick="myOnClickHandler(event)"...>

Smail

Answer 11

Why not just check which element was clicked? If you click on something, window.event.target is assigned to the element which was clicked, and the clicked element can also be passed as an argument.

If the target and element aren't equal, it was an event that propagated up.

function myfunc(el){
  if (window.event.target === el){
      // perform action
  }
}
<div onclick="myfunc(this)" />

Avellaneda

Thanks mate, this seems to be the cleanest solution here. On a side-note you have to consider though, that this only matches when the element clicked is the actual topmost element. – Ophthalmologist

Answer 12

Event.preventDefault()

is the current norm, and the one thing that worked for me. See: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Event/preventDefault

    <button value=login onclick="login(event)">login</button>

//and in a script tag
function login(ev){
    ev.preventDefault()
    
    return false;
}

this worked in the latest Chrome, Opera, and IE. (the Mozilla page indicates Firefox would do it too, so I don't even test it!)

Hest

Answer 13

This also works - In the link HTML use onclick with return like this :

<a href="mypage.html" onclick="return confirmClick();">Delete</a>

And then the comfirmClick() function should be like:

function confirmClick() {
    if(confirm("Do you really want to delete this task?")) {
        return true;
    } else {
        return false;
    }
};

Director

This is not what the question meant. – Solitary

@jbird That's exactly what the question meant. It is a different (older) way to cancel an event from bubbling up the dom tree (it's in the dom api level 1 specs). – Sin

@Sin But the click's action isn't something that the user needs to confirm. In the question, we only want the child's onclick() to fire and not the parent's onclick(). Putting a user prompt in between those is not helpful. I hope you can see this difference. – Solitary

The confirm isn't relevant. I am referring to the return value. quote: In the link HTML use onclick with return like this – Sin

returning false cancels following the link, it doesnt cancel the propagation on my chrome – Lascar

Answer 14

<div onclick="alert('you clicked the header')" class="header">
  <span onclick="alert('you clicked inside the header'); event.stopPropagation()">
    something inside the header
  </span>
</div>

Lascar

Answer 15

Script

function handleTeste(e) {
  const event = e || window.event;

  event.preventDefault();
  event.stopPropagation();

  console.log("Clicked");
}

Html

<div class="favorite" onclick="handleTeste(event)">
  <i class="fa-duotone fa-heart fs-2 text-hover-gray-800 text-primary"></i>
</div>

Envelop

Answer 16

The best solution would be handle with the event through a javascript function, but in order to use a simple and quick solution using the html element directly, and once that the "event" and "window.event" are deprecated and not universally supported (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Window/event), I suggest the following "hard code":

<div onclick="alert('blablabla'); (arguments[0] ? arguments[0].stopPropagation() : false);">...</div>

Swamy