Touch events

Aug 27, 2019

Discover the basics of working with touch events in JavaScript

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See more on JavaScript events

Touch events are those events that are triggered when viewing the page on a mobile device, like a smartphone or a tablet.

They allow you to track multitouch events.

We have 4 touch events:

touchstart a touch event has started (the surface is touched)
touchend a touch event has ended (the surface is no longer touched)
touchmove the finger (or whatever is touching the device) moves over the surface
touchcancel the touch event has been cancelled

Every time a touch event occurs we are passed a touch event:

const link = document.getElementById('my-link')
link.addEventListener('touchstart', (event) => {
  // touch event started
})

Here are all the properties we can access on that event

identifier an unique identifier for this specific event. Used to track multi-touch events. Same finger = same identifier.
clientX / clientY the x and y coordinates of the mouse pointer relative to the browser window, regardless of scrolling
screenX / screenY the x and y coordinates of the mouse pointer in the screen coordinates
pageX / pageY the x and y coordinates of the mouse pointer in the page coordinates (including scrolling)
target the element touched

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