adding jQuery click events to dynamically added content

Question

I have a table with multiple rows and columns populated by php and mySQL. For some of the td's I'm adding jQuery click-events in the document.ready function to let the user change the content.

But I also have an option for adding rows to the table and populating them manually. But since the rows I'm adding aren't there on the document ready, they won't get the click event handler appended, and so I'm not able to click them to get input boxes.

<table>
  <tr>
    <td class="clickable">Some info</td>
    <td class="clickable">Some more info</td>
    <td>Unchangable info</td>
  </tr>
  ... more similar rows ...
</table>

and then the jQuery

$("tr.clickable").click(function() {
   //add input fields
}

$("span#addNewRow").click(function() {
   $("table").append('<tr><td class="clickable"></td> ... </tr>')
}

Answer 1

You want to use live events, which were introduced in 1.3.

$("tr.clickable").live("click", function() {
   //add input fields
});

$("span#addNewRow").live("click", function() {
   $("table").append('<tr><td class="clickable"></td> ... </tr>')
});

UPDATE: Note that as of jQuery 1.7, live() is deprecated. Use on() instead. And in some cases, delegate() may be a better choice. See the comments below.

Example of how to use .on():

$("table").on("click", "tr.clickable", function() {
   //add input fields
});

Answer 2

You can use .delegate() function which attach a handler to one or more events for all elements that match the selector, now or in the future, based on a specific set of root elements.