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Enrique Gomez-Salas
19,437 Points'this' vs. 'event.target'
Whats the difference?
1 Answer
![andren](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/229e60726cd92951c31d7303e40be2cd?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fecs-static.teamtreehouse.com%2Fassets%2Fcontent%2Fdefault_avatar-445fbbabfc8dc9188fb5967fe43322ee0c3e0dd1e10f378bf8343784af5a13eb.webp&r=pg)
andren
28,558 Pointsthis
within a jQuery event handler maps to event.currentTarget
for direct event handlers, and usually event.target
for delegated event handlers. The event handler shown in this video is a delegated handler.
The difference between currentTarget
and target
is that currentTarget
will always refer to the element that the event listener is attached to, the p
elements with the spoiler
class in this case. Whereas target
refers to the specific element that actually triggered the event, which in this case is the button
element inside the p
element.
So in this video this
and event.target
points to the same element, the button element.
Edit: This answer was edited after the fact to correct for the fact that I did not account for the difference between direct and delegated event handlers.