jQuery UI - Close Dialog When Clicked Outside

Question

I have a jQuery UI Dialog that gets displayed when specific elements are clicked. I would like to close the dialog if a click occurs anywhere other than on those triggering elements or the dialog itself.

Here's the code for opening the dialog:

$(document).ready(function() {
    var $field_hint = $('<div></div>')
        .dialog({
            autoOpen: false,
            minHeight: 50,
            resizable: false,
            width: 375
        });

    $('.hint').click(function() {
        var $hint = $(this);
        $field_hint.html($hint.html());
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'position', [162, $hint.offset().top + 25]);
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'title', $hint.siblings('label').html());
        $field_hint.dialog('open');
    });
    /*$(document).click(function() {
        $field_hint.dialog('close');
    });*/
});

If I uncomment the last part, the dialog never opens. I assume it's because the same click that opens the dialog is closing it again.

---

Final Working Code
Note: This is using the jQuery outside events plugin

$(document).ready(function() {
    // dialog element to .hint
    var $field_hint = $('<div></div>')
            .dialog({
                autoOpen: false,
                minHeight: 0,
                resizable: false,
                width: 376
            })
            .bind('clickoutside', function(e) {
                $target = $(e.target);
                if (!$target.filter('.hint').length
                        && !$target.filter('.hintclickicon').length) {
                    $field_hint.dialog('close');
                }
            });

    // attach dialog element to .hint elements
    $('.hint').click(function() {
        var $hint = $(this);
        $field_hint.html('<div style="max-height: 300px;">' + $hint.html() + '</div>');
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'position', [$hint.offset().left - 384, $hint.offset().top + 24 - $(document).scrollTop()]);
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'title', $hint.siblings('label').html());
        $field_hint.dialog('open');
    });

    // trigger .hint dialog with an anchor tag referencing the form element
    $('.hintclickicon').click(function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        $($(this).get(0).hash + ' .hint').trigger('click');
    });
});

Answer 1

I had same problem while making preview modal on one page. After a lot of googling I found this very useful solution. With event and target it is checking where click happened and depending on it triggers the action or does nothing.

Code Snippet Library site

$('#modal-background').mousedown(function(e) {
var clicked = $(e.target);  
if (clicked.is('#modal-content') || clicked.parents().is('#modal-content')) 
    return; 
} else {  
 $('#modal-background').hide();
}
});

Answer 2

I don't think finding dialog stuff using $('.any-selector') from the whole DOM is so bright.

Try

$('<div />').dialog({
    open: function(event, ui){
        var ins = $(this).dialog('instance');
        var overlay = ins.overlay;
        overlay.off('click').on('click', {$dialog: $(this)}, function(event){
            event.data.$dialog.dialog('close');
        });
    }
});

You're really getting the overlay from the dialog instance it belongs to, things will never go wrong this way.

Answer 3

Check out the jQuery Outside Events plugin

Lets you do:

$field_hint.bind('clickoutside',function(){
    $field_hint.dialog('close');
});

Answer 4

I had to do two parts. First the outside click-handler:

$(document).on('click', function(e){
    if ($(".ui-dialog").length) {
        if (!$(e.target).parents().filter('.ui-dialog').length) {
            $('.ui-dialog-content').dialog('close');
        }
    }
}); 

This calls dialog('close') on the generic ui-dialog-content class, and so will close all dialogs if the click didn't originate in one. It will work with modal dialogs too, since the overlay is not part of the .ui-dialog box.

The problem is:

1. Most dialogs are created because of clicks outside of a dialog
2. This handler runs after those clicks have created a dialog and bubbled up to the document, so it immediately closes them.

To fix this, I had to add stopPropagation to those click handlers:

moreLink.on('click', function (e) {
    listBox.dialog();
    e.stopPropagation(); //Don't trigger the outside click handler
});

Answer 5

This is the only method that worked for me for my NON-MODAL dialog

$(document).mousedown(function(e) {
    var clicked = $(e.target); // get the element clicked
    if (clicked.is('#dlg') || clicked.parents().is('#dlg') || clicked.is('.ui-dialog-titlebar')) {
        return; // click happened within the dialog, do nothing here
    } else { // click was outside the dialog, so close it
        $('#dlg').dialog("close");
    }
});

All credit goes to Axle
Click outside non-modal dialog to close

Answer 6

Forget using another plugin:

Here are 3 methods to close a jquery UI dialog when clicking outside popin:

If the dialog is modal/has background overlay: http://jsfiddle.net/jasonday/6FGqN/

jQuery(document).ready(function() {
    jQuery("#dialog").dialog({
        bgiframe: true,
        autoOpen: false,
        height: 100,
        modal: true,
        open: function(){
            jQuery('.ui-widget-overlay').bind('click',function(){
                jQuery('#dialog').dialog('close');
            })
        }
    });
}); 

If dialog is non-modal Method 1: method 1: http://jsfiddle.net/jasonday/xpkFf/

 // Close Pop-in If the user clicks anywhere else on the page
                     jQuery('body')
                      .bind(
                       'click',
                       function(e){
                        if(
                         jQuery('#dialog').dialog('isOpen')
                         && !jQuery(e.target).is('.ui-dialog, a')
                         && !jQuery(e.target).closest('.ui-dialog').length
                        ){
                         jQuery('#dialog').dialog('close');
                        }
                       }
                      );

Non-Modal dialog Method 2: http://jsfiddle.net/jasonday/eccKr/

  $(function() {
            $( "#dialog" ).dialog({
                autoOpen: false, 
                minHeight: 100,
                width: 342,
                draggable: true,
                resizable: false,
                modal: false,
                closeText: 'Close',
                  open: function() {
                      closedialog = 1;
                      $(document).bind('click', overlayclickclose);
                  },
                  focus: function() {
                      closedialog = 0;
                  },
                  close: function() {
                      $(document).unbind('click');
                  }



        });

         $('#linkID').click(function() {
            $('#dialog').dialog('open');
            closedialog = 0;
        });

         var closedialog;

          function overlayclickclose() {
              if (closedialog) {
                  $('#dialog').dialog('close');
              }

              //set to one because click on dialog box sets to zero
              closedialog = 1;
          }


  });