Is there a way to tell programmatically if clicking an element will have any effect?

Question

Given an element, is there any way to tell with Javascript/jQuery whether there are any click events on that element?

I mean ANY click events. If clicking it would cause ANY code to execute, I want to know about it.

Is this possible?

It must be, if Firebug and Chrome Dev Tools can see all the event listeners tied to an object...

Still need to explain you answer more in detail. It is not understandable yet. — Awais Qarni, Aug 28 '13 at 05:50
Try this: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2518421/jquery-find-events-handlers-registered-with-an-object — dcaswell, Aug 28 '13 at 05:51
http://jsfiddle.net/A7Pcq/ - for everyone who thinks it's possible - do that with this code. — zerkms, Aug 28 '13 at 05:54
@Aerovistae: still, **why** do you need that? Are you sure it's not XY-problem? — zerkms, Aug 28 '13 at 05:55
A similar question: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/446892/how-to-find-event-listeners-on-a-dom-node — Cesar Canassa, Aug 28 '13 at 05:58
@zerkms what? what is an xy-problem? and because I want to find all clickable elements...that's why. — temporary_user_name, Aug 28 '13 at 05:59
@Aerovistae: **why** do you need to find them? What **original** issue are you trying to solve with this terrible solution? — zerkms, Aug 28 '13 at 06:00
Haha...I see this is getting to you...I am sorry...I don't want to give away the game but trust me that you're not seeing the big picture here. Essentially, I'm building a tool that provides an alternate means of interacting with a page..and so I need to be aware of all interactive parts of the page. Just finding tags would not suffice for pages such as gmail where everything is a span or a div. — temporary_user_name, Aug 28 '13 at 06:04
@Aerovistae: sure we don't see the whole picture - because you didn't explain it. The thing is - you're solving your task in an incorrect and error prone way (see how I provided a case for every answer to fail). But anyway, you think it's fine - great and good luck :-) — zerkms, Aug 28 '13 at 06:06
@Aerovistae: well, it's impossible to get. Delegation is what used widely and what you won't be able to catch with any of provided solutions (well, possible if you traverse all the nodes up the tree and check) — zerkms, Aug 28 '13 at 06:08
let us [continue this discussion in chat](http://chat.stackoverflow.com/rooms/36377/discussion-between-aerovistae-and-zerkms) — temporary_user_name, Aug 28 '13 at 06:10

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 28 '13 at 05:55

1

To get the list of events attached to particular element jquery uses

$._data( $("#yourelement")[0], "events" );

answered Aug 28 '13 at 05:55

Prasanna Aarthi

3,439
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@zerkms Replace your fiddle code with the correct one $('div').on('click', 'span', function() { alert('handler'); }); console.log($._data( $("#hello")[0], "events" )); and your HTML as
click me
Im able to view the results in console – Prasanna Aarthi Aug 28 '13 at 06:00
the click handler is delegated to `span`, not to `div`. So your change is not correct. Put `id="hello"` to `span` and see it doesn't work – zerkms Aug 28 '13 at 06:01

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 28 '13 at 05:55

0

There is a script called VisualEvent that does just the work you want. You can look at its code and see what goes on there.

answered Aug 28 '13 at 05:55

user2724066

1

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Aug 28 '13 at 06:03

See http://jsfiddle.net/jvcDV/

HTML:

<a id="p1">I am link 1</a>
<a onclick="javascript:alert('hi');">I am link 2</a>
<a>I am link 3</a>
<a>I am link 4</a>

JS:

$(document).ready(function()
{
    // Add inline event to a link element
    document.getElementById('p1').onclick = function() { alert('hi'); };
    $('a').each(function()
    {
        if(this.onclick == null)
        {
            alert("Link " + this.innerText + " does not have a onclick event");
        }
        else
        {
            alert("Link " + this.innerText + " does have a onclick event");
        }
    });             
});

Is there a way to tell programmatically if clicking an element will have any effect?

3 Answers3