Question

I am writing a jQuery script that needs to work with an existing unchangeable plugin. This plugin listens for text being typed into an <input type='text'> and then processes the result. I can’t alter this. My script is setting the text of the input via $('#display).val(newValue); as a jQueryUI Slider is dragged. I need the plugin to recognize this value as being typed by the user so that it processes the newValue as the slider is dragged.

Can anyone point me in the write direction for this?

Answer 1

You probably need to ‘trigger’ the keyup (or keypressed?) event so that the event handler is fired.

Here is one (slightly dirty) way to do it:

var e = jQuery.Event("keyup");
e.which = 50; // # Some key code value
$("#display").trigger(e);

Note that the plugin may be looking for particular keys, and I may have guessed the event wrong.

The more sophisticated way to do it would be to track down the plugin’s event handler, and then invoke it directly. FireBug may help you find it by step-through debugging. Otherwise, you can use jquery to start inspecting the input’s event handlers.

var events = $('#display').data("events");
jQuery.each(events, function(key, handlerObj) {
  console.log(handlerObj); // alert(handlerObj);
});

Once you’ve found the relevant handler, you can invoke it directly.

HTH