Detecting click event on padding only

Question

I have an HTML element with some padding. I would like to detect for clicks on that element's padding. That is, I don't want the event to fire when the user clicks on the content, just the padding.

Answer 1

I needed this as well, but also wanted a "real" solution. The accepted answer does really not target the question "Detecting click event on padding only" but suggests an intrusive change to the markup.

A "padding click" can be detected simply by retrieving the elements padding settings, computed width and height and compare those values to the mouse click offsets :

function isPaddingClick(element, e) {
  var style = window.getComputedStyle(element, null);
  var pTop = parseInt( style.getPropertyValue('padding-top') );
  var pRight = parseFloat( style.getPropertyValue('padding-right') );
  var pLeft = parseFloat( style.getPropertyValue('padding-left') );  
  var pBottom = parseFloat( style.getPropertyValue('padding-bottom') );
  var width = element.offsetWidth;
  var height = element.offsetHeight;
  var x = parseFloat( e.offsetX );
  var y = parseFloat( e.offsetY );  

  return !(( x > pLeft && x < width - pRight) &&
           ( y > pTop && y < height - pBottom))
}

demo here -> http://jsfiddle.net/er5w47yf/

jQuery :

$('#element').on('click', function(e) {
  if (isPaddingClick(this, e)) {
    console.log('click on padding')
  } else {
    console.log('click on element') 
  }
})

native :

document.getElementById('element').addEventListener('click', function(e) {
  if (isPaddingClick(this, e)) {
    console.log('click on padding')
  } else {
    console.log('click on element') 
  }
}, false)

For convenience, this can be turned into a jQuery pseudo event handler :

(function($) {
  var isPaddingClick = function(element, e) {
    var style = window.getComputedStyle(element, null);
    var pTop = parseInt( style.getPropertyValue('padding-top') );
    var pRight = parseFloat( style.getPropertyValue('padding-right') );
    var pLeft = parseFloat( style.getPropertyValue('padding-left') );  
    var pBottom = parseFloat( style.getPropertyValue('padding-bottom') );
    var width = element.offsetWidth;
    var height = element.offsetHeight;
    var x = parseFloat( e.offsetX );
    var y = parseFloat( e.offsetY );  
    return !(( x > pLeft && x < width - pRight) &&
             ( y > pTop && y < height - pBottom))
  }
  $.fn.paddingClick = function(fn) {
    this.on('click', function(e) {
      if (isPaddingClick(this, e)) {
        fn()
      }
    })   
    return this
  }
}(jQuery));

Now paddingClick works "natively" :

$('#element').paddingClick(function() {
  console.log('padding click')
})

demo -> http://jsfiddle.net/df1ck59r/