How do I get the coordinates of a mouse click on a canvas element?

Question

What\'s the simplest way to add a click event handler to a canvas element that will return the x and y coordinates of the click (relative to the canvas element)?

No

Answer 1

Here is a small modification to Ryan Artecona's answer for canvases with a variable (%) width:

 HTMLCanvasElement.prototype.relMouseCoords = function (event) {
    var totalOffsetX = 0;
    var totalOffsetY = 0;
    var canvasX = 0;
    var canvasY = 0;
    var currentElement = this;

    do {
        totalOffsetX += currentElement.offsetLeft;
        totalOffsetY += currentElement.offsetTop;
    }
    while (currentElement = currentElement.offsetParent)

    canvasX = event.pageX - totalOffsetX;
    canvasY = event.pageY - totalOffsetY;

    // Fix for variable canvas width
    canvasX = Math.round( canvasX * (this.width / this.offsetWidth) );
    canvasY = Math.round( canvasY * (this.height / this.offsetHeight) );

    return {x:canvasX, y:canvasY}
}

Answer 2

First, as others have said, you need a function to get the position of the canvas element. Here's a method that's a little more elegant than some of the others on this page (IMHO). You can pass it any element and get its position in the document:

function findPos(obj) {
    var curleft = 0, curtop = 0;
    if (obj.offsetParent) {
        do {
            curleft += obj.offsetLeft;
            curtop += obj.offsetTop;
        } while (obj = obj.offsetParent);
        return { x: curleft, y: curtop };
    }
    return undefined;
}

Now calculate the current position of the cursor relative to that:

$('#canvas').mousemove(function(e) {
    var pos = findPos(this);
    var x = e.pageX - pos.x;
    var y = e.pageY - pos.y;
    var coordinateDisplay = "x=" + x + ", y=" + y;
    writeCoordinateDisplay(coordinateDisplay);
});

Notice that I've separated the generic findPos function from the event handling code. (As it should be. We should try to keep our functions to one task each.)

The values of offsetLeft and offsetTop are relative to offsetParent, which could be some wrapper div node (or anything else, for that matter). When there is no element wrapping the canvas they're relative to the body, so there is no offset to subtract. This is why we need to determine the position of the canvas before we can do anything else.

Similary, e.pageX and e.pageY give the position of the cursor relative to the document. That's why we subtract the canvas's offset from those values to arrive at the true position.

An alternative for positioned elements is to directly use the values of e.layerX and e.layerY. This is less reliable than the method above for two reasons:

1. These values are also relative to the entire document when the event does not take place inside a positioned element
2. They are not part of any standard

Answer 3

Here is a very nice tutorial-

http://www.html5canvastutorials.com/advanced/html5-canvas-mouse-coordinates/

 <canvas id="myCanvas" width="578" height="200"></canvas>
<script>
  function writeMessage(canvas, message) {
    var context = canvas.getContext('2d');
    context.clearRect(0, 0, canvas.width, canvas.height);
    context.font = '18pt Calibri';
    context.fillStyle = 'black';
    context.fillText(message, 10, 25);
  }
  function getMousePos(canvas, evt) {
    var rect = canvas.getBoundingClientRect();
    return {
      x: evt.clientX - rect.left,
      y: evt.clientY - rect.top
    };
  }
  var canvas = document.getElementById('myCanvas');
  var context = canvas.getContext('2d');

  canvas.addEventListener('mousemove', function(evt) {
    var mousePos = getMousePos(canvas, evt);
    var message = 'Mouse position: ' + mousePos.x + ',' + mousePos.y;
    writeMessage(canvas, message);
  }, false);

hope this helps!

Answer 4

Using jQuery in 2016, to get click coordinates relative to the canvas, I do:

$(canvas).click(function(jqEvent) {
    var coords = {
        x: jqEvent.pageX - $(canvas).offset().left,
        y: jqEvent.pageY - $(canvas).offset().top
    };
});

This works since both canvas offset() and jqEvent.pageX/Y are relative to the document regardless of scroll position.

Note that if your canvas is scaled then these coordinates are not the same as canvas logical coordinates. To get those, you would also do:

var logicalCoords = {
    x: coords.x * (canvas.width / $(canvas).width()),
    y: coords.y * (canvas.height / $(canvas).height())
}

Answer 5

Here is some modifications of the above Ryan Artecona's solution.

function myGetPxStyle(e,p)
{
    var r=window.getComputedStyle?window.getComputedStyle(e,null)[p]:"";
    return parseFloat(r);
}

function myGetClick=function(ev)
{
    // {x:ev.layerX,y:ev.layerY} doesn't work when zooming with mac chrome 27
    // {x:ev.clientX,y:ev.clientY} not supported by mac firefox 21
    // document.body.scrollLeft and document.body.scrollTop seem required when scrolling on iPad
    // html is not an offsetParent of body but can have non null offsetX or offsetY (case of wordpress 3.5.1 admin pages for instance)
    // html.offsetX and html.offsetY don't work with mac firefox 21

    var offsetX=0,offsetY=0,e=this,x,y;
    var htmls=document.getElementsByTagName("html"),html=(htmls?htmls[0]:0);

    do
    {
        offsetX+=e.offsetLeft-e.scrollLeft;
        offsetY+=e.offsetTop-e.scrollTop;
    } while (e=e.offsetParent);

    if (html)
    {
        offsetX+=myGetPxStyle(html,"marginLeft");
        offsetY+=myGetPxStyle(html,"marginTop");
    }

    x=ev.pageX-offsetX-document.body.scrollLeft;
    y=ev.pageY-offsetY-document.body.scrollTop;
    return {x:x,y:y};
}

Answer 6

Be wary while doing the coordinate conversion; there are multiple non-cross-browser values returned in a click event. Using clientX and clientY alone are not sufficient if the browser window is scrolled (verified in Firefox 3.5 and Chrome 3.0).

This quirks mode article provides a more correct function that can use either pageX or pageY or a combination of clientX with document.body.scrollLeft and clientY with document.body.scrollTop to calculate the click coordinate relative to the document origin.

UPDATE: Additionally, offsetLeft and offsetTop are relative to the padded size of the element, not the interior size. A canvas with the padding: style applied will not report the top-left of its content region as offsetLeft. There are various solutions to this problem; the simplest one may be to clear all border, padding, etc. styles on the canvas itself and instead apply them to a box containing the canvas.