Question

Here is jquery code in rails app. The purpose of the code is to eval the value of #rfq_need_report and show the #rfq_report_language if need_report is true or hide if false:

$(document).ready(function() {
  var rpt = $('#rfq_need_report').val();
  alert(rpt);
  if (rpt) {
     alert(rpt);
    $('#rfq_report_language').show();
    alert('show');      
  } else {
    $('#rfq_report_language').hide();
    alert(rpt);
    alert('hide');
  }
}); // end ready

The alert here is just for debug. The rpt is false, however alert(‘show’) gets executed. It seems that the if loop is taking false and decided to execute the loop for true. Sometime If loop is working and sometime it does not. What could cause this strange behavior? Thanks.

Answer 1

In HTML the value field of any input like value="something" is always evaluated as a string. My guess is that in javascript you either set that value to true or false but it is in fact set as “true” or “false” as strings. You could try what was answered on this topic : How can I convert a string to boolean in JavaScript?