React prevent event bubbling in nested components on click

Question

Here s a basic component  Both the  lt ul gt  and  lt li gt  have onClick functions  I want only the onClick on the  lt li gt  to fire  not the  lt ul gt   How can I achieve this   I ve played around with e preventDefault    e stopPropagation    to no avail    class List extends React Component     constructor props        super props          handleClick            do something        render          return          lt ul          onClick   e    gt              console log  parent              this handleClick                      gt           lt li            onClick   e    gt                console log  child                   prevent default  prevent propagation              this handleClick                          gt           lt  li gt                lt  ul gt                    gt  parent      gt  child

User · Answer

On the order of DOM events  CAPTURING vs BUBBLING  There are two stages for how events propagate  These are called  capturing  and  bubbling                                                             ---------------   -----------------   ---------------   -----------------   element1                              element1                              -----------   -----------             -----------   -----------            element2                              element2                           -------------------------             -------------------------                Event CAPTURING                       Event BUBBLING             -----------------------------------   -----------------------------------   The capturing stage happen first  and are then followed by the bubbling stage  When you register an event using the regular DOM api  the events will be part of the bubbling stage by default  but this can be specified upon event creation     CAPTURING event button addEventListener  click   handleClick  true      BUBBLING events button addEventListener  click   handleClick  false  button addEventListener  click   handleClick    In React  bubbling events are also what you use by default      handleClick is a BUBBLING  synthetic  event  lt button onClick  handleClick  gt  lt  button gt      handleClick is a CAPTURING  synthetic  event  lt button onClickCapture  handleClick  gt  lt  button gt    Let s take a look inside our handleClick callback  React    function handleClick e         This will prevent any synthetic events from firing after this one   e stopPropagation       function handleClick e         This will set e defaultPrevented to true       for all synthetic events firing after this one    e preventDefault         An alternative that I haven t seen mentioned here  If you call e preventDefault   in all of your events  you can check if an event has already been handled  and prevent it from being handled again   handleEvent e      if  e defaultPrevented  return     Exits here if event has been handled   e preventDefault         Perform whatever you need to here      For the difference between synthetic events and native events  see the React documentation  https   reactjs org docs events html

User · Answer

I had the same issue  I found stopPropagation did work  I would split the list item into a separate component  as so   class List extends React Component     handleClick   e   gt           do something        render         return          lt ul onClick  this handleClick  gt           lt ListItem onClick  this handleClick  gt Item lt  ListItem gt          lt  ul gt               class ListItem extends React Component     handleClick   e   gt        e stopPropagation          lt ------ Here is the magic     this props onClick           render         return          lt li onClick  this handleClick  gt           this props children         lt  li gt

User · Answer

This is not 100  ideal  but if it is either too much of a pain to pass down props in children -  children fashion or create a Context Provider Context Consumer just for this purpose   and you are dealing with another library which has it s own handler it runs before yours  you can also try      function myHandler e             e persist             e nativeEvent stopImmediatePropagation            e stopPropagation            From what I understand  the event persist method prevents an object from immediately being thrown back into React s SyntheticEvent pool  So because of that  the event passed in React actually doesn t exist by the time you reach for it  This happens in grandchildren because of the way React handle s things internally by first checking parent on down for SyntheticEvent handlers  especially if the parent had a callback    As long as you are not calling persist on something which would create significant memory to keep creating events such as onMouseMove  and you are not creating some kind of Cookie Clicker game like Grandma s Cookies   it should be perfectly fine   Also note  from reading around their GitHub occasionally  we should keep our eyes out for future versions of React as they may eventually resolve some of the pain with this as they seem to be going towards making folding React code in a compiler transpiler

User · Answer

The new way to do this is a lot more simple and will save you some time  Just pass the event into the original click handler and call preventDefault      clickHandler e       e preventDefault          Your functionality here

User · Answer

React uses event delegation with a single event listener on document for events that bubble  like  click  in this example  which means stopping propagation is not possible  the real event has already propagated by the time you interact with it in React  stopPropagation on React s synthetic event is possible because React handles propagation of synthetic events internally   stopPropagation  function e       e stopPropagation        e nativeEvent stopImmediatePropagation

User · Answer

You can avoid event bubbling by checking target of event  For example if you have input nested to the div element where you have handler for click event  and you don t want to handle it  when input is clicked  you can just pass event target into your handler and check is handler should be executed based on properties of target  For example you can check if  target localName      input     return   So  it s a way to  avoid  handler execution

User · Answer

I had issues getting event stopPropagation   working  If you do too  try moving it to the top of your click handler function  that was what I needed to do to stop the event from bubbling  Example function      toggleFilter e        e stopPropagation       If moved to the end of the function  will not work     let target   e target      let i   10     Sanity breaker      while true          if  --i     0    return          if  target classList contains  filter              target classList toggle  active            break                target   target parentNode

User · Answer

This is an easy way to prevent the click event from moving forward to the next component and then call your yourFunction   lt Button onClick   e   gt   e stopPropagation    yourFunction someParam    gt Delete lt  Button gt

[reactjs] React prevent event bubbling in nested components on click

On the order of DOM events: CAPTURING vs BUBBLING

Let's take a look inside our handleClick callback (React):

An alternative that I haven't seen mentioned here

Examples related to reactjs

Examples related to onclick

Examples related to event-propagation