How do I detect a click outside an element?

Question

I have some HTML menus, which I show completely when a user clicks on the head of these menus. I would like to hide these elements when the user clicks outside the menus' area.

Is something like this possible with jQuery?

$("#menuscontainer").clickOutsideThisElement(function() {
    // Hide the menus
});

Answer 1

Here is the vanilla JavaScript solution for future viewers.

Upon clicking any element within the document, if the clicked element's id is toggled, or the hidden element is not hidden and the hidden element does not contain the clicked element, toggle the element.

(function () {
    "use strict";
    var hidden = document.getElementById('hidden');
    document.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
        if (e.target.id == 'toggle' || (hidden.style.display != 'none' && !hidden.contains(e.target))) hidden.style.display = hidden.style.display == 'none' ? 'block' : 'none';
    }, false);
})();

(function () {
    "use strict";
    var hidden = document.getElementById('hidden');
    document.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
        if (e.target.id == 'toggle' || (hidden.style.display != 'none' && !hidden.contains(e.target))) hidden.style.display = hidden.style.display == 'none' ? 'block' : 'none';
    }, false);
})();

<a href="javascript:void(0)" id="toggle">Toggle Hidden Div</a>
<div id="hidden" style="display: none;">This content is normally hidden. click anywhere other than this content to make me disappear</div>

If you are going to have multiple toggles on the same page you can use something like this:

1. Add the class name hidden to the collapsible item.
2. Upon document click, close all hidden elements which do not contain the clicked element and are not hidden
3. If the clicked element is a toggle, toggle the specified element.

(function () {
    "use strict";
    var hiddenItems = document.getElementsByClassName('hidden'), hidden;
    document.addEventListener('click', function (e) {
        for (var i = 0; hidden = hiddenItems[i]; i++) {
            if (!hidden.contains(e.target) && hidden.style.display != 'none')
                hidden.style.display = 'none';
        }
        if (e.target.getAttribute('data-toggle')) {
            var toggle = document.querySelector(e.target.getAttribute('data-toggle'));
            toggle.style.display = toggle.style.display == 'none' ? 'block' : 'none';
        }
    }, false);
})();

<a href="javascript:void(0)" data-toggle="#hidden1">Toggle Hidden Div</a>
<div class="hidden" id="hidden1" style="display: none;" data-hidden="true">This content is normally hidden</div>
<a href="javascript:void(0)" data-toggle="#hidden2">Toggle Hidden Div</a>
<div class="hidden" id="hidden2" style="display: none;" data-hidden="true">This content is normally hidden</div>
<a href="javascript:void(0)" data-toggle="#hidden3">Toggle Hidden Div</a>
<div class="hidden" id="hidden3" style="display: none;" data-hidden="true">This content is normally hidden</div>

Answer 2

The event has a property called event.path of the element which is a "static ordered list of all its ancestors in tree order". To check if an event originated from a specific DOM element or one of its children, just check the path for that specific DOM element. It can also be used to check multiple elements by logically ORing the element check in the some function.

$("body").click(function() {
  target = document.getElementById("main");
  flag = event.path.some(function(el, i, arr) {
    return (el == target)
  })
  if (flag) {
    console.log("Inside")
  } else {
    console.log("Outside")
  }
});

#main {
  display: inline-block;
}

<script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/2.1.1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<div id="main">
  <ul>
    <li>Test-Main</li>
    <li>Test-Main</li>
    <li>Test-Main</li>
    <li>Test-Main</li>
    <li>Test-Main</li>
  </ul>
</div>
<div id="main2">
  Outside Main
</div>

So for your case It should be

$("body").click(function() {
  target = $("#menuscontainer")[0];
  flag = event.path.some(function(el, i, arr) {
    return (el == target)
  });
  if (!flag) {
    // Hide the menus
  }
});

Answer 3

You can listen for a click event on document and then make sure #menucontainer is not an ancestor or the target of the clicked element by using .closest().

If it is not, then the clicked element is outside of the #menucontainer and you can safely hide it.

$(document).click(function(event) { 
    if(!$(event.target).closest('#menucontainer').length) {
        if($('#menucontainer').is(":visible")) {
            $('#menucontainer').hide();
        }
    }        
});

Edit – 2017-06-23

You can also clean up after the event listener if you plan to dismiss the menu and want to stop listening for events. This function will clean up only the newly created listener, preserving any other click listeners on document. With ES2015 syntax:

export function hideOnClickOutside(selector) {
  const outsideClickListener = (event) => {
    if (!$(event.target).closest(selector).length) {
      if ($(selector).is(':visible')) {
        $(selector).hide()
        removeClickListener()
      }
    }
  }

  const removeClickListener = () => {
    document.removeEventListener('click', outsideClickListener)
  }

  document.addEventListener('click', outsideClickListener)
}

Edit – 2018-03-11

For those who don't want to use jQuery. Here's the above code in plain vanillaJS (ECMAScript6).

function hideOnClickOutside(element) {
    const outsideClickListener = event => {
        if (!element.contains(event.target)) { // or use: event.target.closest(selector) === null
            if (isVisible(element)) {
                element.style.display = 'none'
                removeClickListener()
            }
        }
    }

    const removeClickListener = () => {
        document.removeEventListener('click', outsideClickListener)
    }

    document.addEventListener('click', outsideClickListener)
}

const isVisible = elem => !!elem && !!( elem.offsetWidth || elem.offsetHeight || elem.getClientRects().length ) // source (2018-03-11): https://github.com/jquery/jquery/blob/master/src/css/hiddenVisibleSelectors.js 

NOTE: This is based on Alex comment to just use !element.contains(event.target) instead of the jQuery part.

But element.closest() is now also available in all major browsers (the W3C version differs a bit from the jQuery one). Polyfills can be found here: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Element/closest

Answer 4

I found this method in some jQuery calendar plugin.

function ClickOutsideCheck(e)
{
  var el = e.target;
  var popup = $('.popup:visible')[0];
  if (popup==undefined)
    return true;

  while (true){
    if (el == popup ) {
      return true;
    } else if (el == document) {
      $(".popup").hide();
      return false;
    } else {
      el = $(el).parent()[0];
    }
  }
};

$(document).bind('mousedown.popup', ClickOutsideCheck);

Answer 5

NOTE: Using stopEventPropagation() is something that should be avoided as it breaks normal event flow in the DOM. See this article for more information. Consider using this method instead

Attach a click event to the document body which closes the window. Attach a separate click event to the container which stops propagation to the document body.

$(window).click(function() {
//Hide the menus if visible
});

$('#menucontainer').click(function(event){
    event.stopPropagation();
});

Answer 6

This should work:

$('body').click(function (event) {
    var obj = $(event.target);
    obj = obj['context']; // context : clicked element inside body
    if ($(obj).attr('id') != "menuscontainer" && $('#menuscontainer').is(':visible') == true) {
        //hide menu
    }
});