blur() vs. onblur()

Question

blur() vs. onblur()

118.4k Views Asked by DA. At 15 April 2025 at 08:56

I have a input tag with an onblur event listener:

<input id="myField" type="input" onblur="doSomething(this)" />

Via JavaScript, I want to trigger the blur event on this input so that it, in turn, calls the doSomething function.

My initial thought is to call blur:

document.getElementById('myField').blur()

But that doesn't work (though no error).

This does:

document.getElementById('myField').onblur()

Why is that? .click() will call the click event attached to an element via the onclick listener. Why does blur() not work the same way?

Original Q&A

There are 3 best solutions below

cusimar9 On 06 March 2011 at 19:06

I guess it's just because the onblur event is called as a result of the input losing focus, there isn't a blur action associated with an input, like there is a click action associated with a button

Elian Ebbing On 06 March 2011 at 19:23

Contrary to what pointy says, the blur() method does exist and is a part of the w3c standard. The following exaple will work in every modern browser (including IE):

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd">
<html>
    <head>
        <title>Javascript test</title>
        <script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
            window.onload = function()
            {
                var field = document.getElementById("field");
                var link = document.getElementById("link");
                var output = document.getElementById("output");

                field.onfocus = function() { output.innerHTML += "<br/>field.onfocus()"; };
                field.onblur = function() { output.innerHTML += "<br/>field.onblur()"; };
                link.onmouseover = function() { field.blur(); };
            };
        </script>
    </head>
    <body>
        <form name="MyForm">
            <input type="text" name="field" id="field" />
            <a href="javascript:void(0);" id="link">Blur field on hover</a>
            <div id="output"></div>
        </form>
    </body>
</html>

Note that I used link.onmouseover instead of link.onclick, because otherwise the click itself would have removed the focus.

**Pointy** · Accepted Answer

This:

document.getElementById('myField').onblur();

works because your element (the <input>) has an attribute called "onblur" whose value is a function. Thus, you can call it. You're not telling the browser to simulate the actual "blur" event, however; there's no event object created, for example.

Elements do not have a "blur" attribute (or "method" or whatever), so that's why the first thing doesn't work.

blur() vs. onblur()

There are 3 best solutions below

Related Questions in JAVASCRIPT

Related Questions in JQUERY

Related Questions in ONBLUR

Trending Questions

Popular # Hahtags

Popular Questions