Event: target property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since September 2021.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The read-only target property of the Event interface is a reference to the object onto which the event was dispatched. It is different from Event.currentTarget when the event handler is called during the bubbling or capturing phase of the event.

Value

The associated EventTarget.

Example

The event.target property can be used in order to implement event delegation.

js
// Make a list
const ul = document.createElement("ul");
document.body.appendChild(ul);

const li1 = document.createElement("li");
const li2 = document.createElement("li");
ul.appendChild(li1);
ul.appendChild(li2);

function hide(evt) {
  // evt.target refers to the clicked <li> element
  // This is different from evt.currentTarget, which would refer to the parent <ul> in this context
  evt.target.style.visibility = "hidden";
}

// Attach the listener to the list
// It will fire when each <li> is clicked
ul.addEventListener("click", hide, false);

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# ref-for-dom-event-target③

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also