How to get an element's ID from event.target

Question

Consider a piece of code that looks like the following:

$('body').on('click', function(e){

});

I know there is a way to get the element type from e.target, i.e. e.target.nodeName, but how can I get the id of that element from that? If that can't be done, is there another way to get the id of the element that was clicked on?

Answer 1

You can use e.target.id. e.target represents DOM object and you can access all its property and methods.

$('body').on('click', function(e){
    alert(e.target.id);    
});

You can convert the DOM object to jQuery object using jQuery function jQuery(e.target) or $(e.target) to call the jQuery functions on it.

Answer 2

To get the attribute of a target element in JavaScript you would simply use:

e.target.getAttribute('id');

See also: https://stackoverflow.com/a/10280487/5025060 for the subtle distinction between DOM properties and their attributes.

Answer 3

$('body').on('click', function(e){
    var id = $(this).attr('id');
    alert(id);
});