jQuery using $.on to call newly added elements

More than a year ago, I had written a blog about how to bind events to newly added elements using jQuery.

The scenario can be found here: http://blog.kongnir.com/2012/02/08/jquery-function-not-binding-to-newly-added-dom-elements/

In my previous solution, I had used $.live() in place of $.change(). However, as noted by a commenter in that blog, as of time of writing, $.live() is deprecated.

Instead, we should now use $.on() if you need to capture events of newly added elements.

For example, in normal circumstance, we would do this:

$(".existing-button").click(function() {
    alert("This will work if button already exist on load");
});

However, if you add new elements to the document using AJAX, then the above will not work. That button doesn’t exist.

In both circumstances, this will work:

$(document).on("click",".new-button", function() {
    alert("This will work even if element is newly added");
});

If you notice, the syntax is quite different. The element to call on is the containing element, not the element that the event is called. So let’s say “.new-button” is contained within “#main”, then the following should work too.

$("#main").on("click",".new-button", function() {
    alert("This will work even if element is newly added"); 
});

Reference: http://api.jquery.com/on/