How do I attach events to dynamic HTML elements with jQuery?

I am adding a new answer to reflect changes in later jQuery releases. The .live() method is deprecated as of jQuery 1.7.

From http://api.jquery.com/live/

As of jQuery 1.7, the .live() method is deprecated. Use .on() to attach event handlers. Users of older versions of jQuery should use .delegate() in preference to .live().

For jQuery 1.7+ you can attach an event handler to a parent element using .on(), and pass the a selector combined with 'myclass' as an argument.

See http://api.jquery.com/on/

So instead of...

$(".myclass").click( function() {
    // do something
});

You can write...

$('body').on('click', 'a.myclass', function() {
    // do something
});

This will work for all a tags with 'myclass' in the body, whether already present or dynamically added later.

The body tag is used here as the example had no closer static surrounding tag, but any parent tag that exists when the .on method call occurs will work. For instance a ul tag for a list which will have dynamic elements added would look like this:

$('ul').on('click', 'li', function() {
    alert( $(this).text() );
});

As long as the ul tag exists this will work (no li elements need exist yet).

Sometimes doing this (the top-voted answer) is not always enough:

$('body').on('click', 'a.myclass', function() {
    // do something
});

This can be an issue because of the order event handlers are fired. If you find yourself doing this, but it is causing issues because of the order in which it is handled.. You can always wrap that into a function, that when called "refreshes" the listener.

For example:

function RefreshSomeEventListener() {
    // Remove handler from existing elements
    $("#wrapper .specific-selector").off(); 

    // Re-add event handler for all matching elements
    $("#wrapper .specific-selector").on("click", function() {
        // Handle event.
    }
}

Because it is a function, whenever I set up my listener this way, I typically call it on document ready:

$(document).ready(function() {
    // Other ready commands / code

    // Call our function to setup initial listening
    RefreshSomeEventListener();
});

Then, whenever you add some dynamically added element, call that method again:

function SomeMethodThatAddsElement() {
    // Some code / AJAX / whatever.. Adding element dynamically

    // Refresh our listener, so the new element is taken into account
    RefreshSomeEventListener();
}

Hopefully this helps!

Regards,