Capture “tap” event with pure JavaScript

Question

How can I capture a user\'s \"tap\" event with pure JS? I cannot use any libraries, unfortunately.

Answer 1

There are touchstart, touchend and other events. You can add event listeners for them in this way:

var el = document.getElementById('test');
el.addEventListener('touchstart', touchHandler);

More information about native DOM events you can find on MDN webstite.

Answer 2

This is not my code but I can't remember where I got it from, used successfully. It uses jQuery but no extra libraries or plugins for the tap handling itself.

$.event.special.tap = {
    setup: function(data, namespaces) {
        var $elem = $(this);
        $elem.bind('touchstart', $.event.special.tap.handler)
             .bind('touchmove', $.event.special.tap.handler)
             .bind('touchend', $.event.special.tap.handler);
    },

    teardown: function(namespaces) {
        var $elem = $(this);
        $elem.unbind('touchstart', $.event.special.tap.handler)
             .unbind('touchmove', $.event.special.tap.handler)
             .unbind('touchend', $.event.special.tap.handler);
    },

    handler: function(event) {
        event.preventDefault();
        var $elem = $(this);
        $elem.data(event.type, 1);
        if (event.type === 'touchend' && !$elem.data('touchmove')) {
            event.type = 'tap';
            $.event.handle.apply(this, arguments);
        } else if ($elem.data('touchend')) {
            $elem.removeData('touchstart touchmove touchend');
        }
    }
};

$('.thumb img').bind('tap', function() {
    //bind tap event to an img tag with the class thumb
}

I used this for a project exclusively for iPad, so might need tweaking to work for desktop and tablet together.

Answer 3

The click event is triggered on mouse click as well as on a touch click.

The touchstart event is triggered when the screen is touched.

The touchend event is triggered when the touch ends. If the default action is prevented, a click event will not trigger.

http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/

Answer 4

I wrote a little script myself. It's not in pure-JS, but works fine for me. It prevents executing the script on scrolling, meaning the script only fires on a 'tap'-event.

$(element)
        .on('touchstart', function () {
            $(this).data('moved', '0');
        })
        .on('touchmove', function () {
            $(this).data('moved', '1');
        })
        .on('touchend', function () {
            if($(this).data('moved') == 0){
                // HERE YOUR CODE TO EXECUTE ON TAP-EVENT
            }
        });