In Javascript, how to get the current id of the div where mouse pointer is?

Question

How to get the id of the div on which the mouse is currently pointing?

Solution 1

I think your best bet is to track mouseover at the document level and maintain the id of the last element hit.

var lastID = null;

var handleMouseover = function (e) {
    var target = e.target || e.srcElement;
    lastID = target.id;
};

if (document.addEventListener) {
    document.addEventListener('mouseover', handleMouseover, false);
}
else {
    document.attachEvent('onmouseover', handleMouseover);
}

Solution 2

<div id="the-id" onmouseover="alert(this.id)">some text</div>

Solution 3

You can use a javascript variable to store the current hovered div.. jQuery (or standard JS) could be used to set the event handler to populate the variable.

Visible test at: http://jsfiddle.net/gfosco/Hys7r/

Comments

[Alberto Zaccagni]

@Downvoters: What's wrong with my answer? Not for the two -1 (don't care) but for the way i solved the problem.

[lincolnk]

no vote from me, but you'd have to do that on every element if you want to determine which one you are currently over.

[Alberto Zaccagni]

Of course, yes, but the op did not specify he wanted something like that. Btw i've understood, thanks. ;)

[joshua]

its simple i can limit it to which divs I want! thanks