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Handling onClick Events on ChartJS Bar Charts

Mar 1, 2023

Detecting what bar on a bar chart the user clicked is easy, but the API for doing so has changed several times between major ChartJS releases. For ChartJS 4.x, you need to attach an onclick handler to the chart's canvas and use the getElementsForEventAtNode() method as follows. This method returns an object which contains an index property that tells you which index in your labels was clicked.

const canvas = document.getElementById('chart');
const ctx = canvas.getContext('2d');
const chart = new Chart(ctx, {
  type: 'bar',
  data: {
    labels: ['A', 'B', 'C'],
    datasets: [{
      label: 'Easy as',
      data: [1, 2, 3],
    }],
  },
  options: {
    responsive: true
  }
});

// Make sure to attach `onclick` to the canvas, **not** the chart instance
canvas.onclick = (evt) => {
  const res = chart.getElementsAtEventForMode(
    evt,
    'nearest',
    { intersect: true },
    true
  );
  // If didn't click on a bar, `res` will be an empty array
  if (res.length === 0) {
    return;
  }
  // Alerts "You clicked on A" if you click the "A" chart
  alert('You clicked on ' + chart.data.labels[res[0].index]);
};

Below is a live example. Click on "A" to see a You clicked on A alert.

In ChartJS 2 and 3

The only difference with ChartJS 2.x and 3.x is you need to use the getElementAtEvent() method, not getElementsAtEventForMode(). The getElementAtEvent() method is slightly more concise.

// The following only works with ChartJS 2.x or 3.x.
canvas.onclick = (evt) => {
  const res = chart.getElementAtEvent(evt);
  if (res.length === 0) {
    return;
  }
  alert('You clicked on ' + chart.data.labels[res[0]._index]);
};

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Handling onClick Events on ChartJS Bar Charts

In ChartJS 2 and 3

More Chartjs Tutorials