Question

I have a piece of jQuery that loops through each element in a given div( #container) and does a javascript alert each time a span is clicked. This works fine if the <span>‘s are static.

However, if I use a piece of code like:

$(someLink).click(function(){
   $("#container").html( <new html with new spans> )
});

The jQuery code doesn’t fire off. Oddly enough though

My question is : Is there a reason my Click events don’t work for dynamically created items? I assume I will have to add something into my document ready or heartbeat-script (which is fired every 100 miliseconds) to hook up the events??

Answer 1

Do this:

 $( '#wrapper' ).on( 'click', 'a', function () { ... })

 $( 'body'     ).on( 'click', '.your_dynamic_elem_css_selector', function () { ... })  # use body as wrapper static elem

where #wrapper is a static element in which you add the dynamic links.

So, you have a wrapper which is hard-coded into the HTML source code:

<div id="wrapper"></div>

and you fill it with dynamic content. The idea is to delegate the events to that wrapper, instead of binding handlers directly on the dynamic elements.

---

Btw, I recommend Backbone.js – it gives structure to this process:

var YourThing = Backbone.View.extend({

    // the static wrapper (the root for event delegation)
    el: $( '#wrapper' ),

    // event bindings are defined here 
    events: {
        'click a': 'anchorClicked'
    },

    // your DOM event handlers
    anchorClicked: function () {
        // handle click event 
    }

});

new YourThing; // initializing your thing