delegate-it [![][badge-gzip]][link-bundlephobia]

Lightweight event delegation

This is a fork of the popular but abandoned delegate with some improvements:

• modern: ES2022, TypeScript, Edge 16+ (it uses WeakMap and Element.closest())
• idempotent: identical listeners aren't added multiple times, just like the native addEventListener
• debugged (2d54c11, c6bb88c)
• supports AbortSignal

Install

npm install delegate-it

// This module is only offered as a ES Module
import delegate from 'delegate-it';

Usage

Add event delegation

delegate('.btn', 'click', event => {
	console.log(event.delegateTarget); // The element matching '.btn' that was clicked
});

Multiple selectors or event types

// Listen to multiple selectors
delegate(['.btn', '.link'], 'click', event => {
	console.log(event.delegateTarget);
});

// Listen to multiple event types
delegate('.btn', ['click', 'keypress'], event => {
	console.log(event.delegateTarget);
});

With listener options

delegate('.btn', 'click', event => {
	console.log(event.delegateTarget);
}, {
	capture: true
});

On a custom base

Use this option if you don't want to have a global listener attached on html, it improves performance:

delegate('.btn', 'click', event => {
	console.log(event.delegateTarget);
}, {
	base: document.querySelector('main')
});

Remove event delegation

const controller = new AbortController();
delegate('.btn', 'click', event => {
	console.log(event.delegateTarget);
}, {
	signal: controller.signal,
});

controller.abort();

Listen to one event only

delegate('.btn', 'click', event => {
	console.log('This will only be called once');
}, {
	once: true
});

Listen to one event only, with a promise

import {oneEvent} from 'delegate-it';

const event = await oneEvent('.btn', 'click');
console.log(event.delegateTarget); // The element matching '.btn' that was clicked

Wait for a specific event with a filter

import {oneEvent} from 'delegate-it';

// Resolves only when a .btn with data-id="42" is clicked
const event = await oneEvent('.btn', 'click', {
	filter: event => event.delegateTarget.dataset.id === '42',
});

API

delegate(selector, type, callback, options?)

Attaches a delegated event listener. The actual listener is added to the base element (defaults to document.documentElement) and the callback is only called when the event's target matches selector.

Unlike raw addEventListener, identical listeners (same selector, type, callback, and capture value) are not added multiple times.

selector

Type: string | string[]

A CSS selector string or array of CSS selector strings to match against. The callback is called when the event target (or one of its ancestors) matches the selector and is a descendant of base.

type

Type: string | string[]

The event type (e.g. 'click') or array of event types to listen for.

callback

Type: (event: DelegateEvent) => void

The function to call when the event is triggered. Receives a DelegateEvent — a standard Event with an added delegateTarget property.

options

Type: DelegateOptions

Optional object extending AddEventListenerOptions with one extra field:

Option	Type	Description
base	EventTarget	The element to attach the listener to. Defaults to document.documentElement. Use a specific element for better performance.
capture	boolean	Whether to use capture phase. Default: false.
once	boolean	If true, the listener is removed after its first invocation.
signal	AbortSignal	If provided, the listener is removed when the signal is aborted.

---

oneEvent(selector, type, options?)

Returns a Promise that resolves with the first matching DelegateEvent. Useful as an alternative to delegate with {once: true}.

If the signal is already aborted when oneEvent is called, or is aborted before the event fires, the promise resolves with undefined.

import {oneEvent} from 'delegate-it';

const event = await oneEvent('.btn', 'click');
// event is a DelegateEvent, or undefined if the signal was aborted

selector

Type: string | string[]

A CSS selector string or array of CSS selector strings.

type

Type: string

The event type to listen for.

options

Type: OneEventOptions

Same as delegate options, minus once (which is always set automatically), plus:

Option	Type	Description
base	EventTarget	The element to attach the listener to. Defaults to document.documentElement.
capture	boolean	Whether to use capture phase. Default: false.
signal	AbortSignal	If provided, the promise resolves with undefined when the signal is aborted.
filter	(event: DelegateEvent) => boolean	If provided, the promise only resolves when this function returns true. Events that don't pass the filter are ignored and the listener stays active.

---

DelegateEvent

A regular DOM Event extended with one additional property:

delegateTarget

Type: Element

The element that matched the selector. This is different from event.target, which is the innermost element that was actually interacted with (e.g. a <span> inside a <button>), while delegateTarget is always the element matching the selector (e.g. the <button> itself).

delegate('.btn', 'click', event => {
	event.target;         // e.g. <span> inside the button
	event.delegateTarget; // always the <button> matching '.btn'
});

TypeScript

The type of event.delegateTarget is inferred from selector when possible, using typed-query-selector. For example, delegate('button', 'click', ...) will type event.delegateTarget as HTMLButtonElement automatically.

If you're using TypeScript and have event types that are custom, you can override the global GlobalEventHandlersEventMap interface via declaration merging. e.g. say you have a types/globals.d.ts file, you can add the following.

interface GlobalEventHandlersEventMap {
	'details:toggle': UIEvent;
}

In the file that imports EventType, you will now be able to set the event type to 'details:toggle'.

import type {EventType} from 'delegate-it';

const someEventType1: EventType = 'details:toggle'; // all good
const someEventType2: EventType = 'click'; // all good
const someEventType3: EventType = 'some-invalid-event-type'; // no good

Related

• select-dom - Lightweight querySelector/All wrapper that outputs an Array.
• doma - Parse an HTML string into DocumentFragment or one Element, in a few bytes.
• Refined GitHub - Uses this module.