Avoid dropdown menu close on click inside

Question

I have a Twitter Bootstrap dropdown menu. As all Twitter Bootstrap users know, the dropdown menu closes on click (even clicking inside it).

To avoid this, I can easily attach a click event handler on the dropdown menu and simply add the famous event.stopPropagation().

<ul class="nav navbar-nav">

  <li class="dropdown mega-dropdown">

    <a href="javascript:;" class="dropdown-toggle" data-toggle="dropdown">

      <i class="fa fa-list-alt"></i> Menu item 1

      <span class="fa fa-chevron-down pull-right"></span>

    </a>

    <ul class="dropdown-menu mega-dropdown-menu">

      <li>

        <div id="carousel" class="carousel slide" data-ride="carousel">

          <ol class="carousel-indicators">

            <li data-slide-to="0" data-target="#carousel"></li>

            <li class="active" data-slide-to="1" data-target="#carousel"></li>

          </ol>

          <div class="carousel-inner">

            <div class="item">

              <img alt="" class="img-rounded" src="img1.jpg">

            </div>

            <div class="item active">

              <img alt="" class="img-rounded" src="img2.jpg">

            </div>

          </div>

          <a data-slide="prev" role="button" href="#carousel" 

             class="left carousel-control">

            <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-chevron-left"></span>

          </a>

          <a data-slide="next" role="button" href="#carousel" 

             class="right carousel-control">

            <span class="glyphicon glyphicon-chevron-right"></span>

          </a>

        </div>

      </li>

    </ul>

  </li>

</ul>

This looks easy and very common behavior, however, and since carousel-controls (as well as carousel indicators) event handlers are delegated to the document object, the click event on these elements (prev/next controls, ...) will be “ignored”.

$('ul.dropdown-menu.mega-dropdown-menu').on('click', function(event){

    // The event won't be propagated up to the document NODE and 

    // therefore delegated events won't be fired

    event.stopPropagation();

});

Relying on Twitter Bootstrap dropdown hide/hidden events is not a solution for the following reasons:

The provided event object for both event handlers does not give reference to the clicked element

I don't have control over the dropdown menu content so adding a flag class or attribute is not possible

This fiddle is the normal behavior and  this fiddle is with event.stopPropagation() added.

Answer 1

For removing the data attribute like data-toggle="dropdown" and implementing the open/close of the dropdown can be the solution.

For handling the click on the link to open/close the dropdown, use this :

$('li.dropdown.mega-dropdown a').on('click', function (event) {

    $(this).parent().toggleClass('open');

});

and then listening to the clicks outside of the dropdown to close it like this :

$('body').on('click', function (e) {

    if (!$('li.dropdown.mega-dropdown').is(e.target) 

        && $('li.dropdown.mega-dropdown').has(e.target).length === 0 

        && $('.open').has(e.target).length === 0

    ) {

        $('li.dropdown.mega-dropdown').removeClass('open');

    }

});

For more information, Have a look at this demo: http://jsfiddle.net/RomaLefrancois/hh81rhcm/2/