Question

I’ve been searching around this morning and I’m not finding any simple solutions… basically, I want to capture a change in an input element, but also know the previous value.

Here’s a change event and an input element in its simplest form. Clearly, I can get the new value with $(elem).val(), but is there a sneaky method I’m missing for getting the previous value? I don’t see anything in the jQuery API to do this, but maybe someone’s already done this and has some tips?

<script>
    $(document).ready(function(){
        $('#myInputElement').bind('change', function(){
            //var oldvalue = ???
            var newvalue = $(this).val();
        });
    });
</script>
<input id="myInputElement" type="text">

I’m not against writing my own solution, I just want to make sure I’m not recreating the wheel here.

Answer 1

A better approach is to store the old value using .data. This spares the creation of a global var which you should stay away from and keeps the information encapsulated within the element. A real world example as to why Global Vars are bad is documented here

e.g

<script>
    //look no global needed:)

    $(document).ready(function(){
        // Get the initial value
       var $el = $('#myInputElement');
       $el.data('oldVal',  $el.val() );


       $el.change(function(){
            //store new value
            var $this = $(this);
            var newValue = $this.data('newVal', $this.val());
       })
       .focus(function(){
            // Get the value when input gains focus
            var oldValue = $(this).data('oldVal');
       });
    });
</script>
<input id="myInputElement" type="text">