Question

I am attempting to remove a value from an array using splice. starting at 0 and ending at 0 splice, but it is not removing the value at index 0. I added a function getItemRow to check the species index which returns 0. I dumped the values of the array into an alert and it still outputs species which should of been deleted. invalidElement.splice(indexValue, indexValue); works as expected for indexes that are NOT 0. Why is this happening and how do I delete the value that has 0 index?

javascript code:

var invalidElement = new Array("species", "alias", "gender", "breeding", "birth_date");

//This function will be removed once fixed!!
function getItemRow()
{
    var myPosition=-1
    for (i=0;i<invalidElement.length;i++)
    {
        if(invalidElement[i]=="species") {
            myPosition = i;
            break;
        }
    }
    alert(myPosition)
}

function validateElement(formId, element, selector, errorContainer)
{
    getItemRow()//for testing purposes
    //var indexValue = $.inArray(element, invalidElement);
    var indexValue = invalidElement.indexOf(element);

    alert(element);
    $.ajax({
        type: 'POST',
        cache: false,
        url: "validate_livestock/validate_form/field/" + element,
        data: element+"="+$(selector).val(),
        context: document.body,
        dataType: 'html',
        success: function(data){
            if (data == "false")
            {
                $(errorContainer).removeClass('element_valid').addClass('element_error');
                invalidElement = element;
                alert(invalidElement.join('\n'))//for testing purposes
                //alert(indexValue);
            }
            else
            {
                $(errorContainer).removeClass('element_error').addClass('element_valid');
                invalidElement.splice(indexValue, indexValue);
                alert(invalidElement.length);//for testing purposes
                alert(invalidElement.join('\n'))//for testing purposes
            }
        }
    });
}

$("#species").change(function(){
    validateElement('#add_livestock', 'species', '#species', '.species_error_1')
});

Answer 1

Splice can work in two modes; to remove or insert items.

When removing items you’ll specify two parameters: splice(index, length) where index is the starting index, and length is a positive number of elements to remove (fyi: passing a “0”, as in your example, does nothing–it’s saying “remove zero items starting at index”). In your case you’ll want:

invalidElement.splice(indexValue, 1); // Remove 1 element starting at indexValue

When inserting items you’ll specify (at least) three parameters: splice(index, length, newElement, *additionalNewElements*). In this overload you normally pass 0 as a 2nd parameter, meaning to insert the new elements between existing elements.

 var invalidElements = ["Invalid2", "Invalid3"];
 invalidElements = invalidElements.splice(0, 0, "Invalid1");