W3cubDocs

/Web APIs

Event: defaultPrevented property

The defaultPrevented read-only property of the Event interface returns a boolean value indicating whether or not the call to Event.preventDefault() canceled the event.

Value

A boolean value, where true indicates that the default user agent action was prevented, and false indicates that it was not.

Example

This example logs attempts to visit links from two <a> elements. JavaScript is used to prevent the second link from working.

HTML

html

<p><a id="link1" href="#link1">Visit link 1</a></p>
<p><a id="link2" href="#link2">Try to visit link 2</a> (you can't)</p>
<p id="log"></p>

JavaScript

js

function stopLink(event) {
  event.preventDefault();
}

function logClick(event) {
  const log = document.getElementById("log");

  if (event.target.tagName === "A") {
    log.innerText = event.defaultPrevented
      ? `Sorry, but you cannot visit this link!\n${log.innerText}`
      : `Visiting link…\n${log.innerText}`;
  }
}

const a = document.getElementById("link2");
a.addEventListener("click", stopLink);
document.addEventListener("click", logClick);

Result

Specifications

Browser compatibility

Desktop Mobile
Chrome Edge Firefox Internet Explorer Opera Safari WebView Android Chrome Android Firefox for Android Opera Android Safari on IOS Samsung Internet
defaultPrevented 5 12 6 9 11 5 3 18 6 11 5 1.0

© 2005–2023 MDN contributors.
Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License v2.5 or later.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Event/defaultPrevented