Question

If I have multiple textboxes which have different ID’s but all id’s start with ‘pics’ preceeded by a number. so:

textbox1  id = 'pics1' value='test1'
textbox2  id = 'pics2' value='test2'
textbox3  id = 'pics3' value='test1'
...
submit

I want to do some validation that when the user clicks submit..there are no two values in the textboxes that are same. For the above example, validation will result in error and form wont submit. because pics1 and pics3 have same values.

Answer 1

This will work for however many text inputs that you have

function validate()  {
  var inputs = $('input:text[id^="pics"]');
  var values = $.map(inputs, function(n, i) {
      return n.value;
  });

  values = unique(values);

  return values.length === inputs.length;
}

function unique(arr) {
  var r = [];
  o:for(var i = 0, n = arr.length; i < n; i++) {
    for(var x = i + 1 ; x < n; x++) {
       if(arr[x]==arr[i]) continue o;
    }
    r[r.length] = arr[i];
  }
  return r;
}