How do I check if the user clicked inside the current component?

Question

I have a component called Dialog , in which I attach an event listener on mouse clicks on the window object.

componentDidMount() {
    document.addEventListener('click', this.handleClick);
}

componentWillUnmount() {
    document.removeEventListener('click', this.handleClick);
}

How can I detect (in the handleClick function) whether a click has been fired inside the component or outside? Note that this dialog contains different elements and child components.

Answer 1

parent.contains(child) is your friend. This solution using refs might not be perfect, but simply using this does not work as it's not a proper DOM node. I'm using React 15 here, so keep in mind that in earlier versions you'd have to use .getDOMNode() on the parent.

 class Dialog extends React.Component { constructor() { super(); this.handleClick = this.handleClick.bind(this); } componentDidMount() { document.addEventListener('click', this.handleClick); } componentWillUnmount() { document.removeEventListener('click', this.handleClick); } handleClick(e) { if (this.node.contains(e.target)) { console.log('You clicked INSIDE the component.') } else { console.log('You clicked OUTSIDE the component.') } } render() { return( <span ref={node => this.node = node}> Level 0<br/> <span> Level 1.<br/> <span>Level 2.</span> </span> </span> ); } } ReactDOM.render(<Dialog/>, document.getElementById('View')); 

 <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.1.0/react.min.js"></script> <script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/react/15.1.0/react-dom.min.js"></script> <div id="View"></div>