jQuery allows event delegation using .live().

When using jQuery there are instances where I have to bind my events to the document root, i.e. $(document). My impression was that ‘live’ should also work with this root. But it does not. Consider the following example.

<script language = "JavaScript" type = "text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function (){

  $(document).bind('custom_event.am', function(){
      alert('Bind works with document root!');
   });
   
   $(document).trigger('custom_event.am');
  
  $(document).live('custom_event1.am', function(){
      alert('Live does not work with document root!');
   });
   
   $('#am_wrapper').trigger('custom_event1.am');
   
  });
  
</script>

But if we use anything other than the document root, there is no problem. Consider the following example.

<script language = "JavaScript" type = "text/javascript">
  $(document).ready(function (){

  $('#am_wrapper').live('custom_event1.am', function(){
      alert('Live now works!');
   });
   
   $('#am_wrapper').trigger('custom_event1.am');
   
  });
  

</script>
<div id = "am_wrapper">  </div>

To unravel the mystery I delved into the jQuery source code and concluded the following.

Live events are bound to the document root. So when a ‘live’ event fires it bubbles up to the document root. A special handler function first called(‘liveHandler’). Before it executes the custom(your) handler it makes an attempt to gather all the binding for the the said event. To do this it runs this statement:

match = jQuery( event.target ).closest( selectors, event.currentTarget );

This fails because ‘closest’ starts from the current element and moves upwards. As the target and current target both are the document root there is no where to go. As there are no matches(match.length === 0) the function exits without doing much.

Even if it wasn’t for this caveat I am not a big fan of binding my events to the root. Would prefer to reserve a top level element to store all my bindings.