Find mouse position relative to element

user_111669 0
Viewed 406432

I want to make a little painting app using canvas. So I need to find the mouse's position on the canvas.

javascript
29 Answers

The following calculates the mouse position relation to the canvas element:

const example = document.getElementById('example');

example.onmousemove = function(e) { 
    const x = e.pageX - e.currentTarget.offsetLeft; 
    const y = e.pageY - e.currentTarget.offsetTop; 
}
user_3298170

I tried all these solutions and due to my special setup with a matrix transformed container (panzoom library) none worked. This returns the correct value, even if zoomed and paned:

mouseevent(e) {
 const x = e.offsetX,
       y = e.offsetY
}

But only if there are no child elements in the way. This can be circumvented by making them 'invisible' to the event, using CSS:

.child {
   pointer-events: none;
}
user_59506260

If you want to get the layerX and layerY related to one element, maybe you could try：

let bbox_rect = document.getElementById("dom-ID").getBoundingClientRect()
let layerX = e.clientX-bbox_rect.left
let layerY = e.clientY-bbox_rect.top
user_148815370

For those of you developing regular websites or PWAs (Progressive Web Apps) for mobile devices and/or laptops/monitors with touch screens, then you have landed here because you might be used to mouse events and are new to the sometimes painful experience of Touch events... yay!

There are just 3 rules:

  1. Do as little as possible during mousemove or touchmove events.
  2. Do as much as possible during mousedown or touchstart events.
  3. Cancel propagation and prevent defaults for touch events to prevent mouse events from also firing on hybrid devices.

Needless to say, things are more complicated with touch events because there can be more than one and they're more flexible (complicated) than mouse events. I'm only going to cover a single touch here. Yes, I'm being lazy, but it's the most common type of touch, so there.

var posTop;
var posLeft;
function handleMouseDown(evt) {
  var e = evt || window.event; // Because Firefox, etc.
  posTop = e.target.offsetTop;
  posLeft = e.target.offsetLeft;
  e.target.style.background = "red";
  // The statement above would be better handled by CSS
  // but it's just an example of a generic visible indicator.
}
function handleMouseMove(evt) {
  var e = evt || window.event;
  var x = e.offsetX; // Wonderfully
  var y = e.offsetY; // Simple!
  e.target.innerHTML = "Mouse: " + x + ", " + y;
  if (posTop)
    e.target.innerHTML += "<br>" + (x + posLeft) + ", " + (y + posTop);
}
function handleMouseOut(evt) {
  var e = evt || window.event;
  e.target.innerHTML = "";
}
function handleMouseUp(evt) {
  var e = evt || window.event;
  e.target.style.background = "yellow";
}
function handleTouchStart(evt) {
  var e = evt || window.event;
  var rect = e.target.getBoundingClientRect();
  posTop = rect.top;
  posLeft = rect.left;
  e.target.style.background = "green";
  e.preventDefault(); // Unnecessary if using Vue.js
  e.stopPropagation(); // Same deal here
}
function handleTouchMove(evt) {
  var e = evt || window.event;
  var pageX = e.touches[0].clientX; // Touches are page-relative
  var pageY = e.touches[0].clientY; // not target-relative
  var x = pageX - posLeft;
  var y = pageY - posTop;
  e.target.innerHTML = "Touch: " + x + ", " + y;
  e.target.innerHTML += "<br>" + pageX + ", " + pageY;
  e.preventDefault();
  e.stopPropagation();
}
function handleTouchEnd(evt) {
  var e = evt || window.event;
  e.target.style.background = "yellow";
  // Yes, I'm being lazy and doing the same as mouseout here
  // but obviously you could do something different if needed.
  e.preventDefault();
  e.stopPropagation();
}
div {
  background: yellow;
  height: 100px;
  left: 50px;
  position: absolute;
  top: 80px;
  user-select: none; /* Disable text selection */
  -ms-user-select: none;
  width: 100px;
}
<div 
  onmousedown="handleMouseDown()" 
  onmousemove="handleMouseMove()"
  onmouseout="handleMouseOut()"
  onmouseup="handleMouseUp()" 
  ontouchstart="handleTouchStart()" 
  ontouchmove="handleTouchMove()" 
  ontouchend="handleTouchEnd()">
</div>
Move over box for coordinates relative to top left of box.<br>
Hold mouse down or touch to change color.<br>
Drag to turn on coordinates relative to top left of page.

Prefer using Vue.js? I do! Then your HTML would look like this:

<div @mousedown="handleMouseDown"
     @mousemove="handleMouseMove"
     @mouseup="handleMouseUp"
     @touchstart.stop.prevent="handleTouchStart"
     @touchmove.stop.prevent="handleTouchMove"
     @touchend.stop.prevent="handleTouchEnd">
user_95362650 

const findMousePositionRelativeToElement = (e) => {
    const xClick = e.clientX - e.currentTarget.offsetLeft;
    const yClick = e.clientY - e.currentTarget.offsetTop;
    console.log(`x: ${xClick}`);
    console.log(`y: ${yClick}`);

    // or
    const rect = e.currentTarget.getBoundingClientRect();
    const xClick2 = e.clientX - rect.left;
    const yClick2 = e.clientY - rect.top;
    console.log(`x2: ${xClick2}`);
    console.log(`y2: ${yClick2}`);
}
user_97189500

You can use getBoudingClientRect() of the relative parent.

document.addEventListener("mousemove", (e) => {
  let xCoord = e.clientX - e.target.getBoundingClientRect().left + e.offsetX
  let yCoord = e.clientY - e.target.getBoundingClientRect().top + e.offsetY
  console.log("xCoord", xCoord, "yCoord", yCoord)
})
user_70242150

I implemented an other solution that I think is very simple so I thought I'd share with you guys.

So, the problem for me was that the dragged div would jump to 0,0 for the mouse cursor. So I needed to capture the mouses position on the div to adjust the divs new position.

I read the divs PageX and PageY and set the top and left of the according to that and then to get the values to adjust the coordinates to keep the cursor in the initial position in the div I use a onDragStart listener and store the e.nativeEvent.layerX and e.nativeEvent.layerY that only in the initial trigger gives you the mouses position within the draggable div.

Example code : 

 onDrag={(e) => {
          let newCoords;
          newCoords = { x: e.pageX - this.state.correctionX, y: e.pageY - this.state.correctionY };
          this.props.onDrag(newCoords, e, item.id);
        }}
        onDragStart={
          (e) => {
            this.setState({
              correctionX: e.nativeEvent.layerX,
              correctionY: e.nativeEvent.layerY,
            });
          }

I hope this will help someone that went through the same problems I went through :)

user_63054110 
function myFunction(e) {
    var x =  e.clientX - e.currentTarget.offsetLeft ; 
    var y = e.clientY - e.currentTarget.offsetTop ;
}

this works ok!

user_53076340

You can simply use jQuery’s event.pageX and event.pageY with the method offset() of jQuery to get the position of the mouse relative to an element.

  $(document).ready(function() {
    $("#myDiv").mousemove(function(event){            
      var X = event.pageX - $(this).offset().left;
      var Y = event.pageY - $(this).offset().top;
      $(".cordn").text("(" + X + "," + Y + ")");
    });
  });

You can see an example here: How to find mouse position relative to element

user_129033960

Use this method to get mouse position quickly:

Object.defineProperty(MouseEvent.prototype, "mouseX", {
   get() {
      return this.clientX - this.currentTarget.getBoundingClientRect().left;
   }
});
Object.defineProperty(MouseEvent.prototype, "mouseY", {
   get() {
      return this.clientY - this.currentTarget.getBoundingClientRect().top;
   }
});

example:

document.body.onmousemove=function(e){console.log(e.mouseX,e.mouseY)}
user_57727840

Based on @Patrick Boos solution but fixing potential problem with intermediate scrollbars.

export function getRelativeCoordinates(event: MouseEvent, referenceElement: HTMLElement) {
  const position = {
    x: event.pageX,
    y: event.pageY,
  };

  const offset = {
    left: referenceElement.offsetLeft,
    top: referenceElement.offsetTop,
  };

  let reference = referenceElement.offsetParent as HTMLElement;

  while (reference) {
    offset.left += reference.offsetLeft;
    offset.top += reference.offsetTop;
    reference = reference.offsetParent as HTMLElement;
  }

  const scrolls = {
    left: 0,
    top: 0,
  };

  reference = event.target as HTMLElement;
  while (reference) {
    scrolls.left += reference.scrollLeft;
    scrolls.top += reference.scrollTop;
    reference = reference.parentElement as HTMLElement;
  }

  return {
    x: position.x + scrolls.left - offset.left,
    y: position.y + scrolls.top - offset.top,
  };
}
user_10853090

I had to get the cursor position inside a very wide div with scrollbar. The objective was to drag elements to any position of the div.

To get the mouse position on a far away position deep in the scrolling.

$('.canvas').on('mousemove', function(e){
    $(dragElement).parent().css('top', e.currentTarget.scrollTop + e.originalEvent.clientY );
    $(dragElement).parent().css('left', e.currentTarget.scrollLeft + e.originalEvent.clientX )
});
user_51170640

As I didnt find a solution that would help you get it if you append it into a parents element where you have a e.g. selection.

This is what I did:

let positions = {
  x: event.pageX,
  y: event.pageY - event.currentTarget.getBoundingClientRect().top + event.currentTarget.offsetTop
}
user_198967280

Here is what I got.

    $(".some-class").click(function(e) {

    var posx = 0;
    var posy = 0;

    posx = e.pageX;
    posy = e.pageY;

    alert(posx);
    alert(posy);
});
user_107051590
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