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TIL — Removing DOM Event Handlers using AbortController

Published: · 1 minute read

Thanks to Dan, who recommended “AbortController is your friend” by Sam Thorogood, today I learned about the ability to remove DOM event handlers using AbortController. Sam’s article is full of good use cases for this controller, but this one blew my mind.

const controller = new AbortController();

document.addEventListener(
  "mousemove",
  () => {
    // do some cool things here
  },
  { signal: controller.signal }
);

// later on
controller.abort();

Look at this example that tracks a mousemove event on the document, prints the coordinates and can be aborted on demand by clicking a button. So nice!

See the Pen 2022-06-18 by Pawel Grzybek (@pawelgrzybek) on CodePen.

Baseline: AbortController and AbortSignal is widely available

  • Google Chrome 66 2018.04.17
  • Microsoft Edge 16 2017.10.17
  • Firefox 57 2017.11.14
  • Safari 12.1 2019.03.25

Comments

  • g
    gregory
    , #51dcd327

    What is the difference between this and removeEventListener

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    • Pawel Grzybek
      Pawel Grzybek
      , #c095c627

      It is going to be easier to explain using a snippet.

      document.addEventListener("mousemove", () => {
  // do some cool things here
});

document.removeEventListener("mousemove", () => {
  // do some cool things here
});

// UUuups! There is still handler attached to `mousemove`.
// Each callback create its own instance and
// add/remove doesn't work when they are inlined.
// `AbortController` can help here.

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  • s
    sunpietro
    , #a8b5ae83

    This is really nice example, but kind of unintuitive to use.

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  • A
    A. Matias Quezada
    , #1e536589

    Brilliant! had no idea this was possible!

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