jQuery check if target is link

Question

I have a global function to capture clicks.

$(document).click(function(e){
  //do something
  if(clickedOnLink)
    //do something
});

I want to do additional stuff when the target is a link, but if the the <a> tag actually surrounds a div (as HTML5 allows this) the target will be that div.

http://jsfiddle.net/Af37v/

Answer 1

I believe using is will actually have better performance than the answers suggesting closest:

$(e.target).is('a, a *');

This checks if the element itself is an a or if it is contained with an a.

This should be faster than closest because it will use matches on the element itself and not need to traverse up the DOM tree as closest will do.

Answer 2

If the exact target is link, then you can use .is()

Example:

$(".element").on("click", function(e){
  if($(e.target).is("a")){
    //do your stuff
  }
});

EDIT:

If it is surrounded by other element that is inside an anchor tag, then you can use closest() and check whether it have anchor tag parent or not by using length

Example:

$(".element").on("click", function(e){
  if($(e.target).closest("a").length){
    //do your stuff
  }
});