How to remove all listeners in an element?

Here's a function that is also based on cloneNode, but with an option to clone only the parent node and move all the children (to preserve their event listeners):

function recreateNode(el, withChildren) {
  if (withChildren) {
    el.parentNode.replaceChild(el.cloneNode(true), el);
  }
  else {
    var newEl = el.cloneNode(false);
    while (el.hasChildNodes()) newEl.appendChild(el.firstChild);
    el.parentNode.replaceChild(newEl, el);
  }
}

Remove event listeners on one element:

recreateNode(document.getElementById("btn"));

Remove event listeners on an element and all of its children:

recreateNode(document.getElementById("list"), true);

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If you need to keep the object itself and therefore can't use cloneNode, then you have to wrap the addEventListener function and track the listener list by yourself, like in this answer.

If you’re using jquery events, this can be done in one line:

For jQuery events (.on()):

$("#myEl").off()

For native javascript events (.addEventListener()):

$('#myEl').replaceWith($('#myEl').clone());

Here’s an example:

http://jsfiddle.net/LkfLezgd/3/

I think that the fastest way to do this is to just clone the node, which will remove all event listeners:

var old_element = document.getElementById("btn");
var new_element = old_element.cloneNode(true);
old_element.parentNode.replaceChild(new_element, old_element);

Just be careful, as this will also clear event listeners on all child elements of the node in question, so if you want to preserve that you'll have to resort to explicitly removing listeners one at a time.