Question

I want to check if a checkbox just got unchecked, when a user clicks on it. The reason for this is because i want to do a validation when a user unchecks a checkbox. Because atleast one checkbox needs to be checked. So if he unchecks the last one, then it automatically checks itself again.

With jQuery i can easily find out wether it’s checked or not:

$('#check1').click(function() {
    if($(this).is(':checked'))
        alert('checked');
    else
        alert('unchecked');
});

But i actually only want to have an if statement that checks if a checkbox just got unchecked.

So i thought i could do that with the following code:

$('#check2').click(function() {
    if($(this).not(':checked'))
        alert('unchecked');
    else
        alert('checked');
});

But this will always show the ‘unchecked’ message. Not really what i was expecting…

demo: http://jsfiddle.net/tVM5H/

So eventually i need something like:

$('#check2').click(function() {
    if($(this).not(':checked')) {
        // Got unchecked, so something!!!
    }
});

But obviously this doesn’t work. I rather don’t want to use the first example, because then i’d have an unnecessary ‘else’ statement when i only need one ‘if’ statement.

So first thing, is this a jQuery bug? Cause to me it’s unexpected behaviour. And second, anyone any ides for a good alternative?

Answer 1

Try this:

if(!$(this).is(':checked'))

demo