Detectinig the target of the click using JavaScript?

3.8k Views Asked by Registered User At 10 April 2025 at 18:26

How do I detect what object or ID or the user right-clicked on? I'm using the onContextMenu to trigger a function but I don't know how to detect the target.

Original Q&A

There are 3 best solutions below

Radek Benkel On 05 February 2011 at 21:13 BEST ANSWER

<html>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript">
    if (document.addEventListener) {
        document.addEventListener('contextmenu', function(e) {
            alert(e.target.nodeName); //or e.target.getAttribute('id') 
            e.preventDefault();
        }, false);
    } else {
        document.attachEvent('oncontextmenu', function(e) {
            alert(window.event.srcElement.nodeName); //or e.srcElement and then like above
            window.event.returnValue = false;
        });
    }
</script>
</head>
<body>
<span>Lorem ipsum...</span><br/>
body content
</body>
</html>

PS. I've seen similar code before ;)

Venge On 05 February 2011 at 20:43

Your handler should accept an event object as its parameter; the srcElement property of the event will be the object that triggered the event.

ludesign On 05 February 2011 at 20:58

As Patrick mentioned, you are receiving an event object as parameter to your onContentMenu callback function, where you can find the element triggered the event. I am using this code for cross-browser compatibility.

var oE = event.srcElement || event.originalTarget;

Note: originalTarget is Mozilla specific. You might want to pay attention to event.target https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/event.target

Detectinig the target of the click using JavaScript?

There are 3 best solutions below

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