Avoid dropdown menu close on click inside

Question

I have a Twitter Bootstrap dropdown menu. As all Twitter Bootstrap users know, the dropdown menu closes on click (even clicking inside it).

To avoid this, I can easily attach a click event handler on the dropdown menu and simply add the famous event.stopPropagation().

<ul class="nav navbar-nav">
  <li class="dropdown mega-dropdown">
    <a href="javascript:;" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">
      <i class="fa fa-list-alt"></i> Menu item 1
      <span class="fa fa-chevron-down pull-right"></span>
    </a>
    <ul class="dropdown-menu mega-dropdown-menu">
      <li>
        <div id="carousel" class="carousel slide" data-ride="carousel">
          <ol class="carousel-indicators">
            <li data-slide-to="0" data-target="#carousel"></li>
            <li class="active" data-slide-to="1" data-target="#carousel"></li>
          </ol>
          <div class="carousel-inner">
            <div class="item">
              <img alt="" class="img-rounded" src="img1.jpg">
            </div>
            <div class="item active">
              <img alt="" class="img-rounded" src="img2.jpg">
            </div>
          </div>
          <a data-slide="prev" role="button" href="#carousel" 
             class="left carousel-control">
            <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-chevron-left"></span>
          </a>
          <a data-slide="next" role="button" href="#carousel" 
             class="right carousel-control">
            <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-chevron-right"></span>
          </a>
        </div>
      </li>
    </ul>
  </li>
</ul>

This looks easy and a very common behavior, however, and since carousel-controls (as well as carousel indicators) event handlers are delegated to the document object, the click event on these elements (prev/next controls, ...) will be “ignored”.

$('ul.dropdown-menu.mega-dropdown-menu').on('click', function(event){
    // The event won't be propagated up to the document NODE and 
    // therefore delegated events won't be fired
    event.stopPropagation();
});

Relying on Twitter Bootstrap dropdown hide/hidden events is not a solution for the following reasons:

• The provided event for both event handlers doesn’t give you reference to the clicked element
• The dropdown menu content is dynamically generated so adding a flag class is not possible

This fiddle is the normal behavior and this fiddle is with event.stopPropagation() added.

Update

Thanks to Roman for his answer. I also found an answer that you can find below.

Answer 1

jQuery:

<script>
  $(document).on('click.bs.dropdown.data-api', '.dropdown.keep-inside-clicks-open', function (e) {
    e.stopPropagation();
  });
</script>

HTML:

<div class="dropdown keep-inside-clicks-open">
  <button class="btn btn-primary dropdown-toggle" type="button" data-toggle="dropdown">
     Dropdown Example
    <span class="caret"></span>
  </button>
  <ul class="dropdown-menu">
    <li><a href="#">HTML</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">CSS</a></li>
    <li><a href="#">JavaScript</a></li>
  </ul>
</div>

Demo:

Generic: https://jsfiddle.net/kerryjohnson/omefq68b/1/

Your demo with this solution: http://jsfiddle.net/kerryjohnson/80oLdtbf/101/

Answer 2

The simplest working solution for me is:

• adding keep-open class to elements that should not cause dropdown closing
• and this piece of code do the rest:

$('.dropdown').on('click', function(e) {
    var target = $(e.target);
    var dropdown = target.closest('.dropdown');
    return !dropdown.hasClass('open') || !target.hasClass('keep-open');
});

Answer 3

With Angular2 Bootstrap, you can use nonInput for most scenarios:

<div dropdown autoClose="nonInput">

nonInput - (default) automatically closes the dropdown when any of its elements is clicked — as long as the clicked element is not an input or a textarea.

https://valor-software.com/ng2-bootstrap/#/dropdowns

Answer 4

This should help as well

$(document).on('click', 'someyourContainer .dropdown-menu', function (e) {
  e.stopPropagation();
});

Answer 5

$('body').on("click", ".dropdown-menu", function (e) {
    $(this).parent().is(".open") && e.stopPropagation();
});

This may work for any conditions.

Answer 6

In .dropdown content put the .keep-open class on any label like so:

$('.dropdown').on('click', function (e) {
    var target = $(e.target);
    var dropdown = target.closest('.dropdown');
    if (target.hasClass('keep-open')) {
        $(dropdown).addClass('keep-open');
    } else {
        $(dropdown).removeClass('keep-open');
    }
});

$(document).on('hide.bs.dropdown', function (e) {
    var target = $(e.target);
    if ($(target).is('.keep-open')) {
        return false
    }
});

The previous cases avoided the events related to the container objects, now the container inherits the class keep-open and check before being closed.