Question

How to compare two jquery ui autocomplete combobox values, not input values that are generated by jquery but <select><option value="foo"></option></select> values? How to get this values and compare them, everytime they are changed, either one of them?

Answer 1

I did not reallt understand your question correctly the first time.

I suppose you took the combobox code from the jQuery UI Autocomplete demo page ?

If you look at the code, it triggers an event “selected” when a selection happens:

select: function(event, ui) {
    ui.item.option.selected = true;
    // triggers the "selected" event
    self._trigger("selected", event, {
        item: ui.item.option
    });
},

As the combobox example uses the jQuery UI Widget Factory, you can easily bind an event handler for this event from the options when initializing the plugin instance:

$( "#combobox" ).combobox({ 
    selected: function(e, ui) {
        // in here "ui.item" is the <option> selected
        // so you can use "ui.item.value"
    }
});

This will act as sort-of “change handler”. In it, you have access to the value through ui.item.value.

Working example on jsfiddle.