How to detect a textbox's content has changed

Question

I want to detect whenever a textbox's content has changed. I can use the keyup method, but that will also detect keystrokes which do not generate letters, like the arrow keys. I thought of two methods of doing this using the keyup event:

1. Check explictly if the ascii code of the pressed key is a letter\backspace\delete
2. Use closures to remember what was the text in the textbox before the key stroke and check whether this has changed.

Both look kinda cumbersome.

Answer 1

Start observing 'input' event instead of 'change'.

jQuery('#some_text_box').on('input', function() {
    // do your stuff
});

...which is nice and clean, but may be extended further to:

jQuery('#some_text_box').on('input propertychange paste', function() {
    // do your stuff
});

Answer 2

Use the onchange event in HTML/standard JavaScript.

In jQuery that is the change() event. For example:

$('element').change(function() { // do something } );

EDIT

After reading some comments, what about:

$(function() {
    var content = $('#myContent').val();

    $('#myContent').keyup(function() { 
        if ($('#myContent').val() != content) {
            content = $('#myContent').val();
            alert('Content has been changed');
        }
    });
});

Answer 3

The 'change' event doesn't work correctly, but the 'input' is perfect.

$('#your_textbox').bind('input', function() {
    /* This will be fired every time, when textbox's value changes. */
} );

Answer 4

How about this:

< jQuery 1.7

$("#input").bind("propertychange change keyup paste input", function(){
    // do stuff;
});

> jQuery 1.7

$("#input").on("propertychange change keyup paste input", function(){
    // do stuff;
});

This works in IE8/IE9, FF, Chrome

Answer 5

Use closures to remember what was the text in the checkbox before the key stroke and check whether this has changed.

Yep. You don't have to use closures necessarily, but you will need to remember the old value and compare it to the new.

However! This still won't catch every change, because there a ways of editing textbox content that do not involve any keypress. For example selecting a range of text then right-click-cut. Or dragging it. Or dropping text from another app into the textbox. Or changing a word via the browser's spell-check. Or...

So if you must detect every change, you have to poll for it. You could window.setInterval to check the field against its previous value every (say) second. You could also wire onkeyup to the same function so that changes that are caused by keypresses are reflected quicker.

Cumbersome? Yes. But it's that or just do it the normal HTML onchange way and don't try to instant-update.

Answer 6

$(document).on('input','#mytxtBox',function () { 
 console.log($('#mytxtBox').val());
});

You can use 'input' event to detect the content change in the textbox. Don't use 'live' to bind the event as it is deprecated in Jquery-1.7, So make use of 'on'.

Answer 7

I assume that you are looking to do something interactive when the textbox changes (i.e. retrieve some data via ajax). I was looking for this same functionality. I know using a global isn't the most robust or elegant solution, but that is what I went with. Here is an example:

var searchValue = $('#Search').val();
$(function () {
    setTimeout(checkSearchChanged, 0.1);
});

function checkSearchChanged() {
    var currentValue = $('#Search').val();
    if ((currentValue) && currentValue != searchValue && currentValue != '') {
        searchValue = $('#Search').val();
        $('#submit').click();
    }
    else {
        setTimeout(checkSearchChanged, 0.1);
    }
}

One key thing to note here is that I am using setTimeout and not setInterval since I don't want to send multiple requests at the same time. This ensures that the timer "stops" when the form is submitted and "starts" when the request is complete. I do this by calling checkSearchChanged when my ajax call completes. Obviously you could expand this to check for minimum length, etc.

In my case, I am using ASP.Net MVC so you can see how to tie this in with MVC Ajax as well in the following post:

http://geekswithblogs.net/DougLampe/archive/2010/12/21/simple-interactive-search-with-jquery-and-asp.net-mvc.aspx

Answer 8

I would recommend taking a look at jQuery UI autocomplete widget. They handled most of the cases there since their code base is more mature than most ones out there.

Below is a link to a demo page so you can verify it works. http://jqueryui.com/demos/autocomplete/#default

You will get the most benefit from reading the source and seeing how they solved it. You can find it here: https://github.com/jquery/jquery-ui/blob/master/ui/jquery.ui.autocomplete.js.

Basically they do it all, they bind to input, keydown, keyup, keypress, focus and blur. Then they have special handling for all sorts of keys like page up, page down, up arrow key and down arrow key. A timer is used before getting the contents of the textbox. When a user types a key that does not correspond to a command (up key, down key and so on) there is a timer that explorers the content after about 300 milliseconds. It looks like this in the code:

// switch statement in the 
switch( event.keyCode ) {
            //...
            case keyCode.ENTER:
            case keyCode.NUMPAD_ENTER:
                // when menu is open and has focus
                if ( this.menu.active ) {
                    // #6055 - Opera still allows the keypress to occur
                    // which causes forms to submit
                    suppressKeyPress = true;
                    event.preventDefault();
                    this.menu.select( event );
                }
                break;
            default:
                suppressKeyPressRepeat = true;
                // search timeout should be triggered before the input value is changed
                this._searchTimeout( event );
                break;
            }
// ...
// ...
_searchTimeout: function( event ) {
    clearTimeout( this.searching );
    this.searching = this._delay(function() { // * essentially a warpper for a setTimeout call *
        // only search if the value has changed
        if ( this.term !== this._value() ) { // * _value is a wrapper to get the value *
            this.selectedItem = null;
            this.search( null, event );
        }
    }, this.options.delay );
},

The reason to use a timer is so that the UI gets a chance to be updated. When Javascript is running the UI cannot be updated, therefore the call to the delay function. This works well for other situations such as keeping focus on the textbox (used by that code).

So you can either use the widget or copy the code into your own widget if you are not using jQuery UI (or in my case developing a custom widget).

Answer 9

I'd like to ask why you are trying to detect when the content of the textbox changed in real time?

An alternative would be to set a timer (via setIntval?) and compare last saved value to the current one and then reset a timer. This would guarantee catching ANY change, whether caused by keys, mouse, some other input device you didn't consider, or even JavaScript changing the value (another possiblity nobody mentioned) from a different part of the app.

Answer 10

do you consider using change event ?

$("#myTextBox").change(function() { alert("content changed"); });

Answer 11

Use the textchange event via customized jQuery shim for cross-browser input compatibility. http://benalpert.com/2013/06/18/a-near-perfect-oninput-shim-for-ie-8-and-9.html (most recently forked github: https://github.com/pandell/jquery-splendid-textchange/blob/master/jquery.splendid.textchange.js)

This handles all input tags including <textarea>content</textarea>, which does not always work with change keyup etc. (!) Only jQuery on("input propertychange") handles <textarea> tags consistently, and the above is a shim for all browsers that don't understand input event.

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script class="jsbin" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pandell/jquery-splendid-textchange/master/jquery.splendid.textchange.js"></script>
<meta charset=utf-8 />
<title>splendid textchange test</title>

<script> // this is all you have to do. using splendid.textchange.js

$('textarea').on("textchange",function(){ 
  yourFunctionHere($(this).val());    });  

</script>
</head>
<body>
  <textarea style="height:3em;width:90%"></textarea>
</body>
</html>

JS Bin test

This also handles paste, delete, and doesn't duplicate effort on keyup.

If not using a shim, use jQuery on("input propertychange") events.

// works with most recent browsers (use this if not using src="...splendid.textchange.js")

$('textarea').on("input propertychange",function(){ 
  yourFunctionHere($(this).val());    
});  

Answer 12

There's a complete working example here.

<html>
<title>jQuery Summing</title>
<head>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.8.3/jquery.min.js"> </script>
$(document).ready(function() {
$('.calc').on('input', function() {
var t1 = document.getElementById('txt1');
var t2 = document.getElementById('txt2');
var tot=0;
if (parseInt(t1.value))
tot += parseInt(t1.value);
if (parseInt(t2.value))
tot += parseInt(t2.value);
document.getElementById('txt3').value = tot;
});
});
</script>
</head>
<body>
<input type='text' class='calc' id='txt1'>
<input type='text' class='calc' id='txt2'>
<input type='text' id='txt3' readonly>
</body>
</html>

Answer 13

Something like this should work, mainly because focus and focusout would end up with two separate values. I'm using data here because it stores values in the element but doesn't touch the DOM. It is also an easy way to store the value connected to its element. You could just as easily use a higher-scoped variable.

var changed = false;

$('textbox').on('focus', function(e) {
    $(this).data('current-val', $(this).text();
});

$('textbox').on('focusout', function(e) {
    if ($(this).data('current-val') != $(this).text())
        changed = true;
    }
    console.log('Changed Result', changed);
}