The EventTarget interface is implemented by objects that can receive events and may have listeners for them. In other words, any target of events implements the methods associated with this interface.

Element, and its children, as well as Document and Window, are the most common event targets, but other objects can be event targets, too. For example IDBRequest, AudioNode, and AudioContext are also event targets.

Many event targets (including elements, documents, and windows) also support registering event handlers via onevent properties and attributes.

Constructor

EventTarget()

Creates a new EventTarget object instance.

Instance methods

EventTarget.addEventListener()

Registers an event handler of a specific event type on the EventTarget.

EventTarget.removeEventListener()

Removes an event listener from the EventTarget.

EventTarget.dispatchEvent()

Dispatches an event to this EventTarget.

EventTarget.when()

Returns an Observable object representing a stream of events fired on the event target it is called on.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also

• Event index
• Introduction to events
• Event interface