Event.currentTarget

Identifies the current target for the event, as the event traverses the DOM. It always refers to the element to which the event handler has been attached, as opposed to event.target which identifies the element on which the event occurred.

Example

event.currentTarget is interesting to use when attaching the same event handler to several elements.

function hide(e){
  e.currentTarget.style.visibility = "hidden";
  // When this function is used as an event handler: this === e.currentTarget
}

var ps = document.getElementsByTagName('p');

for(var i = 0; i < ps.length; i++){
  ps[i].addEventListener('click', hide, false);
}

// click around and make paragraphs disappear

Specifications

Specification	Status	Comment
DOM The definition of 'Event.currentTarget' in that specification.	Living Standard
DOM4 The definition of 'Event.currentTarget' in that specification.	Recommendation
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 3 Events Specification The definition of 'current event target' in that specification.	Working Draft
Document Object Model (DOM) Level 2 Events Specification The definition of 'Event.currentTarget' in that specification.	Recommendation	Initial definition

Browser compatibility

[1] On Internet Explorer 6 through 8, the event model is different. Event listeners are attached with the non-standard EventTarget.attachEvent method. In this model, there is no equivalent to event.currentTarget and this is the global object. One solution to emulate the event.currentTarget feature is to wrap your handler in a function calling the handler using Function.prototype.call with the element as a first argument. This way, this will be the expected value.

See also

Comparison of Event Targets