Event: type property

Baseline Widely available

This feature is well established and works across many devices and browser versions. It’s been available across browsers since July 2015.

Note: This feature is available in Web Workers.

The type read-only property of the Event interface returns a string containing the event's type. It is set when the event is constructed and is the name commonly used to refer to the specific event, such as click, load, or error.

Value

A string containing the type of Event.

Example

This example logs the event type whenever you press a keyboard key or click a mouse button.

HTML

html
<p>Press any key or click the mouse to get the event type.</p>
<p id="log"></p>

JavaScript

js
function getEventType(event) {
  const log = document.getElementById("log");
  log.innerText = `${event.type}\n${log.innerText}`;
}

// Keyboard events
document.addEventListener("keydown", getEventType, false); // first
document.addEventListener("keypress", getEventType, false); // second
document.addEventListener("keyup", getEventType, false); // third

// Mouse events
document.addEventListener("mousedown", getEventType, false); // first
document.addEventListener("mouseup", getEventType, false); // second
document.addEventListener("click", getEventType, false); // third

Result

Specifications

Specification
DOM Standard
# ref-for-dom-event-type④

Browser compatibility

BCD tables only load in the browser

See also