Check if mousedown with an if statement?

Question

Is it possible to do something like this:

if ($(this).mousedown() == true) {

I thought that would work but it doesn't.

Additional details: I'm trying to check if the mouse button is down when the mouse leaves a specific DIV, so if the person is holding the mouse button down while their mouse leaves the div, do this, otherwise do that.

Do you want to know if the left mouse button is down on an item, or if they just pressed it anywhere on the page? — Jess, Oct 08 '11 at 22:04
Are you trying to determine which event has fired a function/method? — Jared Farrish, Oct 08 '11 at 22:05
Are you trying to see if someone is dragging or selecting an element/text? — Jared Farrish, Oct 08 '11 at 22:08

score 27 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 08 '11 at 22:09

27

The easiest way I can think of is to bind mousedown and mouseup event listeners to the document and update a global variable accordingly. In the mouseout event of your element you can check the state of that variable and act as appropriate. (Note: this assumes that you don't care whether or not the mouse was pressed down while over the div or not... you'll have to clarify your question around that).

var down = false;
$(document).mousedown(function() {
    down = true;
}).mouseup(function() {
    down = false;  
});
$("#example").mouseout(function() {
    if(down) {
        console.log("down");  
    } 
    else {
        console.log("up");   
    }
});

Here's a working example of the above.

answered Oct 08 '11 at 22:09

James Allardice

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Would it be problematic to use `$.data()` to attach the `down` variable to the `#example` element? – Jared Farrish Oct 08 '11 at 22:10
No, not at all problematic. Good thinking, in order to avoid the use of a global variable. – James Allardice Oct 08 '11 at 22:11
I'm thinking if this needs to be on more than one element, for instance. The only thing I was thinking about was speed. – Jared Farrish Oct 08 '11 at 22:14

Joshua Robinson · Answer 2 · 2016-04-02T05:25:50.057

Answering your original question, yes this is possible. When the mousedown event fires over an element the element becomes active and is selectable by the pseudo selector :active. In jQuery if nothing is selected an empty array is returned, we can use this to our advantage in combination with the .length array property and turn the active pseudo selector into a check to see if the mouse is down over a particular element or not like so:

if ( $('#id:active').length ) {
  //do something
}

Checking if the mouse was down over a particular element at a given point in time is a different event and does not go with the title of this question and should be changed might I add. Google brought me here and this answer is for those that will inevitably follow.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 26 '15 at 05:18

Check out this one. http://jsfiddle.net/b1Lzo60n/

Mousedown starts a timer that checks if mouse is still down after 1 second.

<button id="button">Press me</button>
<div id="log"></div>

Code:

var mousedown = false;
var mousedown_timer = '';
$('#button').mousedown(function(e) {
    mousedown = true;
    $('#log').text('mousedown...');
    mousedown_timer = setTimeout(function () {
        if(mousedown) {
            $('#log').text('1 second');
        }
    }, 1000);
}).mouseup(function(e) {
    mousedown = false;
    clearTimeout(mousedown_timer);
    $('#log').text('aborted');
});

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 08 '11 at 22:06

http://jsfiddle.net/5HrWF/

something like this?

Code:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
  <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-latest.js"></script>
</head>
<body>
  <p>Press mouse and release here.</p>

<script>
    $("p").mouseup(function(){
      $(this).append('<span style="color:#F00;">Mouse up.</span>');
    }).mousedown(function(){
      $(this).append('<span style="color:#00F;">Mouse down.</span>');
    });

</script>

</body>
</html>

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered Oct 08 '11 at 22:13

0

Alright, well the best option I can give you is this: http://jsfiddle.net/qK8rr/2/

answered Oct 08 '11 at 22:13

Jess

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This is going to sound like a broken record, but please post your actual code in the answer (this is considered best practice on SO). `:)` – Jared Farrish Oct 08 '11 at 22:16

Check if mousedown with an if statement?

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