Question

I have a dropdown menu which keeps track of the previous and current selected element. The dropdown default value starts on {0}. When a user changes the dropdown the new_value is stored say {2}, but the previous is always {0} unless the user clicks off the dropdown and then re-focuses on a new value, then the previous updates to that value in this case {2}.

Is there a way I can force the focus to update even if the user never un-focuses the dropdown box, basically on every change event?

(function () {
var previous;

    $('select[name=item_a]').focus(function () {
        previous = parseInt($(this).val()); }).change(function() {

            var new_value = $(this).attr('id'); 

     }

Answer 1

var previous, new_value;

$('select[name=item_a]').on({

   focus: function(){
      previous = parseInt($(this).val());
   },

   change: function(){
        new_value = $(this).attr('id');
        $(this).blur();
   }

 });