Question

Is there a standard way in JQUERY to (at document ready time) store the original values of the form fields on the page in order to check (later) whether the fields have truly changed or not?

Normally I will do something like this:

var NameField = $("INPUT[name='NameField']");
//Record the original value.
NameField.OriginalVal = NameField.val();

This is simple enough, but I’m wondering of there is a “Standard” way to do it.

EDIT

One added requirement that I forgot is that it needs to work for all types of form fields including select and textareas.

Answer 1

The default value (i.e. the value that was specified in the source code using the value attribute) is available automatically as the defaultValue property.

alert($("#myInput").defaultValue);

More info at W3Schools

This seems to be part of the JS spec since 1.0 so it’s safe to use. (Reference, German only sorry)