Hacker News Reader

Comment by cocoflunchy | Hacker News Reader

My issue is how to remove the event listener once you've done

    document.addEventListener('click', handleEvent.bind(this));

Doing

    document.removeEventListener('click', handleEvent);

doesn't work, so how can you get rid of it?

View on HN

You could do:

    var boundEvent = handleEvent.bind(this);
    document.addEventListener('click', boundEvent);

and later:

    document.removeEventListener('click', boundEvent);

This situation is a bit messier, though, because you have to keep track of both `handleEvent` and `boundEvent`.

Now it seems obvious... thank you ;)

You would need a reference to the function that you used bind on before binding it to the event

  var eventHandler =  handleEvent.bind(this);
  document.addEventListener('click', eventHandler);
  document.removeEventListener('click', eventHandler);

May seem redundant but if you are trying to remove a listener without using bind you still need a reference.

Since bind() creates a new function just before it's added as a listener, you'll have to save that function somewhere and use that as the listener you want to remove.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com