jQuery is tailor-made to respond to events in an HTML page.
All the different visitor's actions that a web page can respond to are called events.
An event represents the precise moment when something happens.
Examples:
The term "fires" is often used with events. Example: "The keypress event fires the moment you press a key".
Here are some common DOM events:
Mouse Events | Keyboard Events | Form Events | Document/Window Events |
---|---|---|---|
click | keypress | submit | load |
dblclick | keydown | change | resize |
mouseenter | keyup | focus | scroll |
mouseleave | blur | unload |
In jQuery, most DOM events have an equivalent jQuery method.
To assign a click event to all paragraphs on a page, you can do this:
The next step is to define what should happen when the event fires. You must pass a function to the event:
$(document).ready()
The $(document).ready() method allows us to execute a function when the document is fully loaded. This event is already explained in the jQuery Syntax chapter.
click()
The click() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML element.
The function is executed when the user clicks on the HTML element.
The following example says: When a click event fires on a <p> element; hide the current <p> element:
dblclick()
The dblclick() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML element.
The function is executed when the user double-clicks on the HTML element:
mouseenter()
The mouseenter() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML element.
The function is executed when the mouse pointer enters the HTML element:
mouseleave()
The mouseleave() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML element.
The function is executed when the mouse pointer leaves the HTML element:
mousedown()
The mousedown() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML element.
The function is executed, when the left mouse button is pressed down, while the mouse is over the HTML element:
mouseup()
The mouseup() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML element.
The function is executed, when the left mouse button is released, while the mouse is over the HTML element:
hover()
The hover() method takes two functions and is a combination of the mouseenter() and mouseleave() methods.
The first function is executed when the mouse enters the HTML element, and the second function is executed when the mouse leaves the HTML element:
focus()
The focus() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML form field.
The function is executed when the form field gets focus:
blur()
The blur() method attaches an event handler function to an HTML form field.
The function is executed when the form field loses focus:
For a full jQuery event reference, please go to our jQuery Events Reference.