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?

Solution 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>

Solution 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.

Solution 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;
    }
}

Solution 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;
   }
}

Solution 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;"

View more solutions

Comments

[Robert C. Barth]

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

[Vincent Robert]

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 :-)

[Benubird]

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

[DarkDust]

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

[Morgan Cheng]

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

[Pointy]

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

[Guillaume86]

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

[mauretto]

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

[jzonthemtn]

This is not what the question meant.

[gion_13]

@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).

[jzonthemtn]

@gion_13 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.

[gion_13]

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

[RobG]

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.

[Yuval A.]

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

[DannyC]

Thanks @MSC exactly what I needed!

[commonpike]

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

[TechNyquist]

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

[TechNyquist]

Maybe you confused with the function provided by jQuery?

[Simon Mattes]

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.

[jcomeau_ictx]

this doesn't actually answer the question.

[Cesar]

Inline script. It does answer the question

[Arel]

neat answer to a different question. :-/

[Nicole]

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... ?!

[Leon]

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?

[Dave F]

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