Question

I am having a specific problem with the JS event “onclick” and how it works in a very specific case. I have a set of nested DIVs that looks like this (somewhat):

In code:

<div id="A" ...> 
    <div id="B" ...> </div> 
    <div id="C" ...> </div> 
</div>

The exact position of the DIVs are arbitrary, just know that there are nested DIVs.

DIV A has an onclick event attached to it.

When a user clicks on the divs I intend for the srcElement to without exception be div A.
Or maybe I’m just not using the right property.

Basically I want to be able to get the name of the div whose onclick event was called.
from inside the onclick function

Answer 1

If the onclick is on A, then this in the handler will represent that element.

document.getElementById('A').onclick = function() {
    // "this" is the A element
    alert( this.id );  // alert the ID attribute of the element
};