Question

I have a form with a name field and a text area.

When the user types in their name I want to include it in the text area along with some other pre-formatted text.

How can this be done?

jQuery?

Answer 1

Use a keyup handler on the text input and add a readonly="readonly" attribute to the textarea if you want to use it for display only.

For example:

<input type="text">
<br>
<textarea readonly="readonly" rows="10" cols="40"></textarea>

And some jQuery:

var static_text = "Where is pancakes house?\n\n";
$('input').keyup(function() {
    $('textarea').text(static_text + $(this).val());
});

Live demo: http://jsfiddle.net/ambiguous/Tt2gt/1/

Binding to the keyup event will get your <textarea> updating callback called every time a key is pressed in the <input> (including backspaces). If you use a change handler, the <textarea> won’t be updated until the <input> loses focus and that doesn’t sound like what you’re after.