Prevent the default behavior with jQuery event handler

Written byPhuoc Nguyen

Tags

DOM, JavaScript

Created

23 Feb, 2021

If you're using jQuery to manage the events, then you're able to use `return false` within the event handler:

$(element).on('click', function (e) {
    return false;
});

Before returning the value of `false`, the handler would do something else. The problem is that if there's any runtime error occurring in the handler, we will not reach the `return false` statement at the end.

In that case, the default behavior will be taken:

$(element).on('click', function (e) {
    // Do something here, but if there's error at runtime
    // ...
    return false;
});

We can avoid this situation by using the `preventDefault` method before performing any custom handler:

$(element).on('click', function (e) {
    e.preventDefault();

    // Do something here
    // The default behavior is prevented regardless errors at runtime
    // ...
});

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Phước Nguyễn

Prevent the default behavior with jQuery event handler

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