The defaultPrevented
read-only property of the Event
interface returns a Boolean
indicating whether or not the call to Event.preventDefault()
canceled the event.
Note: You should use this instead of the non-standard, deprecated
getPreventDefault()
method (see bug 691151).Syntax
var defaultWasPrevented = event.defaultPrevented;
Value
A Boolean
, where true
indicates that the default user agent action was prevented, and false
indicates that it was not.
Example
This example logs attempts to visit links from two <a>
elements. JavaScript is used to prevent the second link from working.
HTML
<p><a id="link1" href="#link1">Visit link 1</a></p> <p><a id="link2" href="#link2">Try to visit link 2</a> (you can't)</p> <p id="log"></p>
JavaScript
function stopLink(event) { event.preventDefault(); } function logClick(event) { const log = document.getElementById('log'); if (event.target.tagName === 'A') { if (event.defaultPrevented) { log.innerText = 'Sorry, but you cannot visit this link!\n' + log.innerText; } else { log.innerText = 'Visiting link...\n' + log.innerText; } } } const a = document.getElementById('link2'); a.addEventListener('click', stopLink); document.addEventListener('click', logClick);
Result
Specifications
Specification | Status | Comment |
---|---|---|
DOM The definition of 'Event.defaultPrevented()' in that specification. |
Living Standard |
Browser compatibility
The compatibility table on this page is generated from structured data. If you'd like to contribute to the data, please check out https://github.com/mdn/browser-compat-data and send us a pull request.
Desktop | Mobile | |||||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
defaultPrevented | Chrome Full support 18 | Edge Full support 12 | Firefox Full support 6 | IE Full support 9 | Opera Full support 11 | Safari Full support 5 | WebView Android Full support Yes | Chrome Android Full support 18 | Firefox Android Full support 6 | Opera Android Full support 11 | Safari iOS Full support 5 | Samsung Internet Android Full support 1.0 |
Legend
- Full support
- Full support