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JavaScript jQuery Basics Understanding jQuery Events and DOM Traversal The Event Object

Posted by Enrique Gomez-Salas
Enrique Gomez-Salas
19,437 Points

'this' vs. 'event.target'

Whats the difference?

1 Answer

andren
andren
28,558 Points
andren
andren
28,558 Points

this within a jQuery event handler maps to event.currentTarget for direct event handlers, and usually event.target for delegated event handlers. The event handler shown in this video is a delegated handler.

The difference between currentTarget and target is that currentTarget will always refer to the element that the event listener is attached to, the p elements with the spoiler class in this case. Whereas target refers to the specific element that actually triggered the event, which in this case is the button element inside the p element.

So in this video this and event.target points to the same element, the button element.

Edit: This answer was edited after the fact to correct for the fact that I did not account for the difference between direct and delegated event handlers.