Question

I have a <select> and I handle change() event. When the user changes the select option I want to perform a series of actions. But, if I trigger the change via $(item).trigger('change') then I do not want to perform said series of actions.

I see trigger() contains an overload with parameters. I’m not sure if this will work as I have not written a custom event. So, what should I do to determine the difference between a user fired event and my programmatic fired event?

Answer 1

Here’s a quick-and-dirty way to do it:

var progChange = false;

$('select').change(function() {
    if (!progChange) {
        // Do user actions...            
    }
    progChange = false;
});

function callSelectChange() {
    progChange = true;
    $('select').change();
}

You can do it with the trigger method in essentially the same way, and it would eliminate the global, which is a good thing:

$('select').change(function(event, progChange) {
    if (!progChange) {
        // Do user actions...
    }
});

$('select').trigger('change', [true]);

Working example: http://jsfiddle.net/FishBasketGordo/XsPc5/