Question

I have a jQuery UI Dialog that gets displayed when specific elements are clicked. I would like to close the dialog if a click occurs anywhere other than on those triggering elements or the dialog itself.

Here’s the code for opening the dialog:

$(document).ready(function() {
    var $field_hint = $('<div></div>')
        .dialog({
            autoOpen: false,
            minHeight: 50,
            resizable: false,
            width: 375
        });

    $('.hint').click(function() {
        var $hint = $(this);
        $field_hint.html($hint.html());
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'position', [162, $hint.offset().top + 25]);
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'title', $hint.siblings('label').html());
        $field_hint.dialog('open');
    });
    /*$(document).click(function() {
        $field_hint.dialog('close');
    });*/
});

If I uncomment the last part, the dialog never opens. I assume it’s because the same click that opens the dialog is closing it again.

---

Final Working Code
Note: This is using the jQuery outside events plugin

$(document).ready(function() {
    // dialog element to .hint
    var $field_hint = $('<div></div>')
            .dialog({
                autoOpen: false,
                minHeight: 0,
                resizable: false,
                width: 376
            })
            .bind('clickoutside', function(e) {
                $target = $(e.target);
                if (!$target.filter('.hint').length
                        && !$target.filter('.hintclickicon').length) {
                    $field_hint.dialog('close');
                }
            });

    // attach dialog element to .hint elements
    $('.hint').click(function() {
        var $hint = $(this);
        $field_hint.html('<div style="max-height: 300px;">' + $hint.html() + '</div>');
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'position', [$hint.offset().left - 384, $hint.offset().top + 24 - $(document).scrollTop()]);
        $field_hint.dialog('option', 'title', $hint.siblings('label').html());
        $field_hint.dialog('open');
    });

    // trigger .hint dialog with an anchor tag referencing the form element
    $('.hintclickicon').click(function(e) {
        e.preventDefault();
        $($(this).get(0).hash + ' .hint').trigger('click');
    });
});

Answer 1

Check out the jQuery Outside Events plugin

Lets you do:

$field_hint.bind('clickoutside',function(){
    $field_hint.dialog('close');
});