Mouseover Events and Event Delegation in JavaScript - Review: JavaScript event delegation with click handlers (
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Before I proceed to explain how to implement event delegation with “mouseover” events, let's recall how to use it with mouse clicks. I’m going to list the entire source code corresponding to the hands-one example developed in the preceding article of the series, in case you haven’t had the chance to read it.
That being said, here’s an (X)HTML file that implements event delegation with mouse clicks. Take a look at it, please:
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1" />
<title>Example on JavaScript event delegation (with click event)</title>
<script language="javascript">
// get target element
function getEventTarget(e){
var e=e || window.event;
return e.target || e.srcElement;
}
// check if target is a table cell
function highlightCell(e){
var target=getEventTarget(e);
if(target.tagName.toLowerCase()==='td') {
target.className='highlighted';
}
}
// run functions when web page has been loaded
window.onload=function(){
if(document.getElementsByTagName&&document.
getElementById&&document.createElement){
var mytable=document.getElementById('mytable');
if(!mytable){return};
// assign 'onclick' event handler to table (not cells)
mytable.onclick=function(e){
// determine target element and highlight table cell
highlightCell(e);
}
}
}
</script>
<style type="text/css">
table{
width: 500px;
border: 1px solid #000;
}
td{
font: normal 10pt Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
color: #000;
background: #9fc;
border: 1px solid #000;
}
.highlighted{
background: #0c9;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Event delegation in JavaScript (with click event)</h1>
<table id="mytable">
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
<td>This is the content of the cell</td>
</tr>
</table>
</body>
</html>
As you can see, the above (X)HTML file demonstrates how useful event delegation can be for reducing the number of event handlers that must be assigned to certain elements of a web page. In this case, this approach is put to work with an HTML table to highlight its cells as they’re clicked on successively.
At first, it seems as if multiple click handlers had to be attached to the cells of the table, but thanks to the use of event delegation, only one was assigned to the table. On the other hand, the combination of the “getEventTarget()” and “highlightCell()” functions determined in which table cell the click occurred, by means of this event’s bubbling phase.
Now that you've recalled how the previous example functioned, it’s time to see how it can be partially rebuilt to work with “mouseover” events.
This topic will be discussed in detail in the section to come. Thus, click on the link shown below and keep reading.
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