Question

Can this code be shorten in some way? I’ve tried several ways to compact it, but I can’t get it to work:

    //Customer info
$('input#state-field-a, input#state-field-b').hide();
$('select#country-a').change(function(){      
  if ($(this).val() === "United States" || $(this).val() === "Canada" ||$(this).val() === "null")
  {
    $('select#state-a').show();
    $('input#state-field-a, input#state-field-b').hide();
     } else {
    $('select#state-a').hide();
    $('input#state-field-a').show();
  } 
});
//Shipping nfo
$('select#country-b').change(function(){      
  if ($(this).val() === "United States" || $(this).val() === "Canada" ||$(this).val() === "null")
  {
    $('select#state-b').show();
    $('input#state-field-b').hide();
     } else {
    $('select#state-b').hide();
    $('input#state-field-b').show();
  } 
});

Thanks in advance.

UPDATE: I forgot to give some context to this.

I have two areas in the same page, one for Billing/Customer Info and other for Shipping Info, when the user selects an option from the select menu, other options show/hide within the same section. Both functions should work ‘independent’ than each other since they belong to different sections.

For example, if I select Canada from the Customer Info select menu, it can’t change/alter anything in the Shipping Info section.

Not sure if that makes sense.

Thanks again for any help on this.

Answer 1

You can use a few shortcut functions to narrow all of your code down to this:

$('#state-field-a, #state-field-b').hide();
$('#country-a, #country-b').change(function(){
  var m = $.inArray($(this).val(), ["United States","Canada","null"]) != -1;

  $('#' + this.id.replace('country', 'state') + '-a').toggle(m);
  if(this.id === 'country-a') $('#state-field-b').toggle(m);

  $('#' + this.id.replace('country', 'state-field') + '-a').toggle(!m);
});

We’re doing a few things different here:

• Not using tag selectors on IDs
• Using .change() once, since they both have the same effect
• Using $.inArray() to narrow down the if or clauses (IE doesn’t have .indexOf()…)
• Use .toggle(bool) instead of repeated .show()/.hide() code
• The extra if is to account for the difference in your two handlers