Question

I am trying to write a context menu option for a page of mine.
Basically a div is right-clicked, an options menu pops up which can be used to perform tasks.

My problem is trying to find the original element which triggered everything (ie the div that was right-clicked).

My jQuery code is more or lesS:

//this is what displays the context menu
$('.outfeedPosition').bind("contextmenu", function (e) {
    $('#contextMenu').css({
        top: e.pageY + 'px',
        left: e.pageX + 'px'
    }).show();

    //'this' is the element which was clicked by the user.
    alert($(this).attr('id'));

    return false;
});



//this is the contextMenu's button handler.
$('#ctxDelete').click(function () {
    alert('delete was clicked, but i dont know by which element - so I dont know which one to delete');
});


<div id="contextMenu">
    <ul>
        <li><a id="ctxInsert" href="#">Insert</a></li>
        <li><a id="ctxEdit" href="#">Edit</a></li>
        <li><a id="ctxDelete" href="#">Delete</a></li>
    </ul>
</div>

—
So – I can see what element created the event when the initial right-click happens.
But not when the menu item is clicked.

I was working on fumbling something together by writing the element out to a hidden textbox when it is right-clicked, then reading it when one of the options is clicked, then removing it when the menu closes.
Doesn’t seem like the ideal approach though – and I feel like i’m missing something basic.

Hope you see what I am trying to do.
I can post a more complete example on request.

Answer 1

You could consider using the jQuery data storage methods.

In your context menu code you can put:

$('.outfeedPosition').bind("contextmenu", function (e) {
    $('#contextMenu').css({
        top: e.pageY + 'px',
        left: e.pageX + 'px'
    }).show();

    //Store the item that was clicked 
    $("#contextMenu").data('originalElement', this);

    return false;
});

Then when you want to reference the element that initiated the click, you can just do this:

$('#ctxDelete').click(function () {
    var originalElement = $("#contextMenu").data('originalElement');
    alert('delete was clicked by ' + originalElement.id );
});

And put originalElement in the jQuery function $() to access the jQuery goodness. It doesn’t matter where you put the data, since any DOM element can have data associated to it. You can store anything – in the example code above, I store the HTMLElement raw (not jQueryified) but you can store that too if you want.

See here for a little example: http://www.jsfiddle.net/jonathon/sTJ6M/