Event when element added to page

Question

This was previously discussed here: How to do an action when an element is added to a page using Jquery?

The responder suggested triggering a custom event whenever a div was added to the page. However, I'm writing a Chrome extension and don't have access to the page source. What are my options here? I guess in theory I could just use setTimeout to continually search for the element's presence and add my action if the element is there.

Answer 1

ETA 24 Apr 17 I wanted to simplify this a bit with some async/await magic, as it makes it a lot more succinct:

Using the same promisified-observable:

const startObservable = (domNode) => {
  var targetNode = domNode;

  var observerConfig = {
    attributes: true,
    childList: true,
    characterData: true
  };

  return new Promise((resolve) => {
      var observer = new MutationObserver(function (mutations) {
         // For the sake of...observation...let's output the mutation to console to see how this all works
         mutations.forEach(function (mutation) {
             console.log(mutation.type);
         });
         resolve(mutations)
     });
     observer.observe(targetNode, observerConfig);
   })
} 

Your calling function can be as simple as:

const waitForMutation = async () => {
    const button = document.querySelector('.some-button')
    if (button !== null) button.click()
    try {
      const results = await startObservable(someDomNode)
      return results
    } catch (err) { 
      console.error(err)
    }
}

If you wanted to add a timeout, you could use a simple Promise.race pattern as demonstrated here:

const waitForMutation = async (timeout = 5000 /*in ms*/) => {
    const button = document.querySelector('.some-button')
    if (button !== null) button.click()
    try {

      const results = await Promise.race([
          startObservable(someDomNode),
          // this will throw after the timeout, skipping 
          // the return & going to the catch block
          new Promise((resolve, reject) => setTimeout(
             reject, 
             timeout, 
             new Error('timed out waiting for mutation')
          )
       ])
      return results
    } catch (err) { 
      console.error(err)
    }
}

Original

You can do this without libraries, but you'd have to use some ES6 stuff, so be cognizant of compatibility issues (i.e., if your audience is mostly Amish, luddite or, worse, IE8 users)

First, we'll use the MutationObserver API to construct an observer object. We'll wrap this object in a promise, and resolve() when the callback is fired (h/t davidwalshblog)david walsh blog article on mutations:

const startObservable = (domNode) => {
    var targetNode = domNode;

    var observerConfig = {
        attributes: true,
        childList: true,
        characterData: true
    };

    return new Promise((resolve) => {
        var observer = new MutationObserver(function (mutations) {
            // For the sake of...observation...let's output the mutation to console to see how this all works
            mutations.forEach(function (mutation) {
                console.log(mutation.type);
            });
            resolve(mutations)
        });
        observer.observe(targetNode, observerConfig);
    })
} 

Then, we'll create a generator function. If you haven't used these yet, then you're missing out--but a brief synopsis is: it runs like a sync function, and when it finds a yield <Promise> expression, it waits in a non-blocking fashion for the promise to be fulfilled (Generators do more than this, but this is what we're interested in here).

// we'll declare our DOM node here, too
let targ = document.querySelector('#domNodeToWatch')

function* getMutation() {
    console.log("Starting")
    var mutations = yield startObservable(targ)
    console.log("done")
}

A tricky part about generators is they don't 'return' like a normal function. So, we'll use a helper function to be able to use the generator like a regular function. (again, h/t to dwb)

function runGenerator(g) {
    var it = g(), ret;

    // asynchronously iterate over generator
    (function iterate(val){
        ret = it.next( val );

        if (!ret.done) {
            // poor man's "is it a promise?" test
            if ("then" in ret.value) {
                // wait on the promise
                ret.value.then( iterate );
            }
            // immediate value: just send right back in
            else {
                // avoid synchronous recursion
                setTimeout( function(){
                    iterate( ret.value );
                }, 0 );
            }
        }
    })();
}

Then, at any point before the expected DOM mutation might happen, simply run runGenerator(getMutation).

Now you can integrate DOM mutations into a synchronous-style control flow. How bout that.

Answer 2

A pure javascript solution (without jQuery):

const SEARCH_DELAY = 100; // in ms

// it may run indefinitely. TODO: make it cancellable, using Promise's `reject`
function waitForElementToBeAdded(cssSelector) {
  return new Promise((resolve) => {
    const interval = setInterval(() => {
      if (element = document.querySelector(cssSelector)) {
        clearInterval(interval);
        resolve(element);
      }
    }, SEARCH_DELAY);
  });
}

console.log(await waitForElementToBeAdded('#main'));

Answer 3

You can use livequery plugin for jQuery. You can provide a selector expression such as:

$("input[type=button].removeItemButton").livequery(function () {
    $("#statusBar").text('You may now remove items.');
});

Every time a button of a removeItemButton class is added a message appears in a status bar.

In terms of efficiency you might want avoid this, but in any case you could leverage the plugin instead of creating your own event handlers.

Revisited answer

The answer above was only meant to detect that an item has been added to the DOM through the plugin.

However, most likely, a jQuery.on() approach would be more appropriate, for example:

$("#myParentContainer").on('click', '.removeItemButton', function(){
          alert($(this).text() + ' has been removed');
});

If you have dynamic content that should respond to clicks for example, it's best to bind events to a parent container using jQuery.on.

Answer 4

Check out this plugin that does exacly that - jquery.initialize

It works exacly like .each function, the difference is it takes selector you've entered and watch for new items added in future matching this selector and initialize them

Initialize looks like this

$(".some-element").initialize( function(){
    $(this).css("color", "blue");
});

But now if new element matching .some-element selector will appear on page, it will be instanty initialized.

The way new item is added is not important, you dont need to care about any callbacks etc.

So if you'd add new element like:

$("<div/>").addClass('some-element').appendTo("body"); //new element will have blue color!

it will be instantly initialized.

Plugin is based on MutationObserver

Answer 5

The actual answer is "use mutation observers" (as outlined in this question: Determining if a HTML element has been added to the DOM dynamically), however support (specifically on IE) is limited (http://caniuse.com/mutationobserver).

So the actual ACTUAL answer is "Use mutation observers.... eventually. But go with Jose Faeti's answer for now" :)

Answer 6

Since DOM Mutation Events are now deprecated (see note at the bottom) with the latest specifications, and you have no control over the inserted elements because they are added by someone else's code, your only option is to continuously check for them.

function checkDOMChange()
{
    // check for any new element being inserted here,
    // or a particular node being modified

    // call the function again after 100 milliseconds
    setTimeout( checkDOMChange, 100 );
}

Once this function is called, it will run every xxx milliseconds. I chose 100, which is 1/10 (one tenth) of a second. Unless you need real time elements catch, it should be enough.

Edit

As commented by Ben Davis, DOM Level 4 specification introduces Mutation observers (also on Mozilla docs), which replace the deprecated mutation events.