Detect click on the inner text of the element without wrapping the text in a second element

Question

I have a Div which is as big as half of my page using CSS:

<div id="bigdiv">
     CLICK ON THIS TEXT
</div>

I am trying to write a javascript or jquery code which detects click on the text and not the rest of the element. Is there a way to do that?

Answer 1

Since we cannot listen for events directly on the textNodes themselves, we have to take a more creative path to solving the problem. One thing we can do is look at the coordinates of the click event, and see if it overlaps with a textNode.

First, we'll need a small helper method to help us track whether a set of coordinates exists within a set of constraints. This will make it easier for us to arbitrarily determine if a set of x/y values are within the a set of dimensions:

function isInside ( x, y, rect ) {
    return x >= rect.left  && y >= rect.top
        && x <= rect.right && y <= rect.bottom;
}

This is fairly basic. The x and y values will be numbers, and the rect reference will be an object with at least four properties holding the absolute pixel values representing four corners of a rectangle.

Next, we need a function for cycling through all childNodes that are textNodes, and determining whether a click event took place above one of them:

function textNodeFromPoint( element, x, y ) {
    var node, nodes = element.childNodes, range = document.createRange();
    for ( var i = 0; node = nodes[i], i < nodes.length; i++ ) {
        if ( node.nodeType !== 3 ) continue;
        range.selectNodeContents(node);
        if ( isInside( x, y, range.getBoundingClientRect() ) ) {
            return node;
        }
    }
    return false;
}

With all of this in place, we can now quickly determine if a textNode was directly below the clicked region, and get the value of that node:

element.addEventListener( "click", function ( event ) {
    if ( event.srcElement === this ) {
        var clickedNode = textNodeFromPoint( this, event.clientX, event.clientY );
        if ( clickedNode ) {
            alert( "You clicked: " + clickedNode.nodeValue );
        }
    }
});

Note that the initial condition if ( event.srcElement ) === this allows us to ignore click events originating from nested elements, such as an image or a span tag. Clicks that happen over textNodes will show the parent element as the srcElement , and as such those are the only ones we're concerned with.

You can see the results here: http://jsfiddle.net/jonathansampson/ug3w2xLc/

Answer 2

EDIT - Solution without adding wrapping element
Doing this without a wrapping element is quite a hassle. I managed to get it to work, however this will only work for one liners that are centered vertically AND horizontally .

To see the HTML and CSS that goes along with this, see the jsFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/v8jbsu3m/3/

jQuery('#bigDiv').click(function(e) {
    // Get the x and y offest from the window
    margin_top = jQuery(this).offset().top;
    margin_left = jQuery(this).offset().left;

    // Get the dimensions of the element.
    height = jQuery(this).height();
    width = jQuery(this).width();

    // Retrieve the font_size and remove the px addition
    font_size = parseInt(jQuery(this).css('font-size').replace('px', ''));

    // Retrieve the position of the click
    click_x = e.pageX;
    click_y = e.pageY;

    // These variables will be used to validate the end result
    var in_text_y = false;
    var in_text_x = false;

    // Determine the click relative to the clicked element
    relative_x = click_x - margin_left;
    relative_y = click_y - margin_top;

    // Determine whether the y-coordinate of the click was in the text
    if (relative_y >= (parseFloat(height) / 2) - (parseFloat(font_size) / 2) &&
        relative_y <= (parseFloat(height) / 2) + (parseFloat(font_size) / 2))
        in_text_y = true;

    // This piece of code copies the string and places it in a invisible div
    // If this div has the same font styling and no paddings etc... it can
    // be used to get the width of the text
    text = jQuery(this).text();
    text_width = jQuery('#widthTester').html(text).width();

     // Determine whether the x-coordinate of the click was in the text
    if (relative_x >= (parseFloat(width) / 2) - (parseFloat(text_width) / 2) &&
        relative_x < (parseFloat(width) / 2) + (parseFloat(text_width) / 2))
        in_text_x = true;

    // If the x and y coordinates were both in the text then take action
    if (in_text_x && in_text_y)
        alert('You clicked the text!');
});

Also, this code can be optimized, since the same calculcation is done multiple times, but I thought that leaving the calculcations there better illustrated what was going on.

Solution by adding a wrapping element

If you put a span around the text, then you can add an onClick event handler to the span.

<div id="bigdiv">
     <span>CLICK ON THIS TEXT</span>
</div>

jQuery code

jQuery('#bigdiv span').click(function() {
    jquery(this).remove();
});

Answer 3

Quick win would be to have

<div id="bigdiv">
    <span id="text">TEXT HERE</span>
</div>

Script:
$('#text').on('click', function() {
   .....
});

Answer 4

Let's alter the content dinamically - I will make the clicking on lala available:

<div id="gig">
<div id="smthing">one</div>lala
<div id="else"></div>
</div>

Script:

var htmlText = $('#gig').text(); //the big divs text


    var children = $('#gig').children(); //get dom elements so they can be ignored later

    $.each(children, function (index, child) {
        var txt = $(child).text().trim(); 
        if (txt != '') { //if a child has text in him
            htmlText = htmlText.replace(txt, 'xxx'); //replace it in the big text with xxx
        }
    });

    htmlText = htmlText.split("xxx"); //split for xxx make it arrat
    var counter = 0; //the part when the text is added
    $.each(htmlText, function (i, el) {
        htmlText[i] = el.trim();

        if (htmlText[i] != "") { //if there is something here than it's my text
            htmlText[i] = '<span id="text">' + htmlText[i] + '</span>'; //replace it with a HTML element personalized
            counter++; //mark that you have replaced the text
        } else { // if there is nothing at this point it means that I have a DOM element here
            htmlText[i] = $(children[i - counter])[0].outerHTML; //add the DOM element
        }
    });

    if (children.length >= htmlText.length) { //you might have the case when not all the HTML children were added back 
        for (var i = htmlText.length - 1; i < children.length; i++) {
            htmlText[i + 1] = $(children[i])[0].outerHTML; //add them
        }
    }

    htmlText = htmlText.join(""); //form a HTML markup from the altered stuff

    $('#gig').html(htmlText); // replace the content of the big div

    $('#text').on('click', function (data) { //add click support
        alert('ok');
    });

See a working example here: http://jsfiddle.net/atrifan/5qc27f9c/

PS: sorry for the namings and stuff I am a little bit tired.

Are you able to do this, is this what you are looking for?

What the code does: It's making only the text inside the div although the div could have other divs as well, makes only the text that has no HTML container like a div a span ap an a or something like that and alters it adding it in a span and making it available for clicking.

Answer 5

If you want to go straight through HTML, you can use

<div id="bigdiv" onclick="myFunction();">

and then simply apply the function afterwards in JS:

function myFunction(){
    //...
}

EDIT: sorry, if you want the text to be affected, put in <p> around the text or <span> ie.

<div id="bigdiv">
    <p onclick="myFuncion();"> TEXT </p>
</div>