Question

I’m trying out jquery as a javascript library over prototype. Now when it comes to event delegation in prototype I can do the following:

  $('wrapper').observe('click', function(event) {
        var foo = Event.findElement(event, '.foo1');
        if (foo) // do something 

        var bar = Event.findElement(event, '.bar1');
        if (bar) // do something else
    });

So this means only one click handler is placed on the document.

I know jquery has live/delegate methods, but it seems you need to provide the selector in the call (unless I’m mistaken?). Is there a similar way to have just one click handler and do something similar? Or is it better to split them up as separate events?

Thanks

Answer 1

I think it’s a bit cleaner to split them up. When you look at the result it’s a bit cleaner/easier to maintain. Here’s what .delegate() would look like:

$('#wrapper').delegate('.foo1', 'click', function(event) {
  // do something for .foo1 
})).delegate('.bar1', 'click', function(event) {
  // do something for .bar1
});

To answer the question yes you can have a single handler, for example:

$('#wrapper').delegate('.bar1, .foo1', 'click', function(event) {
  if($(this).is('.foo1') // do something for .foo1 
  if($(this).is('.bar1') // do something for .bar1 
});

There are also other approximate methods, e.g. with .click() and $.contains(). But this and other methods are less efficient and a bit harder to maintain, at least to me, you can decide what’s best, but I’d personally go with the 2 handlers in this case.