Assign click handlers in for loop

Question

I'm having several div's #mydiv1, #mydiv2, #mydiv3, ... and want to assign click handlers to them:

$(document).ready(function(){
  for(var i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
    $('#question' + i).click( function(){
      alert('you clicked ' + i);
    });
  }
});

But instead of showing 'you clicked 3' when click on #mydiv3 (as for every other click) I get 'you clicked 20'. What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

It's a common mistake to create closures in loops in Javascript. You need to have some sort of callback function like this:

function createCallback( i ){
  return function(){
    alert('you clicked' + i);
  }
}

$(document).ready(function(){
  for(var i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
    $('#question' + i).click( createCallback( i ) );
  }
});

---

Update June 3, 2016: since this question is still getting some traction and ES6 is getting popular as well, I would suggest a modern solution. If you write ES6, you can use the let keyword, which makes the i variable local to the loop instead of global:

for(let i = 0; i < 20; i++) {
  $('#question' + i).click( function(){
    alert('you clicked ' + i);
  });
}

It's shorter and easier to understand.