I'm trying to make a site where the user can click on any element to edit it's CSS. I use the following to add the click function to all <li>, <div> and <ul>.

$('li,div,ul').click(function () {
    alert(this.id);
});

The problem is if I click on a <li> element, then I get the alert for that and any element underneath it. (all the containers).

Is it possible to have only the top element trigger when clicked?

I'm trying to make a site where the user can click on any element to edit it's CSS. I use the following to add the click function to all <li>, <div> and <ul>.

$('li,div,ul').click(function () {
    alert(this.id);
});

The problem is if I click on a <li> element, then I get the alert for that and any element underneath it. (all the containers).

Is it possible to have only the top element trigger when clicked?

• javascript
• jquery

3 Answers 3

You want to stop event propagation, you do this in jQuery by calling the stopPropagation method on the event object.

$('li,div,ul').click(function (e) {  
    e.stopPropagation();
    alert(this.id); 
});

I believe you'd want to use stopPropagation(); inside the click function.

It sounds to me like you're looking for .stopPropagation(). Calling stopPropagation will prevent the event from "bubbling" up to parent containers.