Question

Original Question

Is there a jQuery method that will check the selection type and set the value appropriately? Example, using .html() or .val().

I have made my own method to do the work for me however am not sure if this is the best way to preform this task.

$.fn.data = function(value) {
    if(this.is("input")){
        this.val(value);
    }else if(... other type ...){
        this.val(value);
    }else{
        this.html(value);
    }
};

I have also looked at using the tagName attribute.
var type = this.prop(“tagName”).toLowerCase();

Edit:

Benchmarking

For anyone interested I did a little benchmarking between this.tagName; and $(this).is(“input”); with 10,000 records.

this.tagName.toLowerCase(); x 10,000 records = 185 milliseconds

$(this).is("input"); x 10,000 records = 1676 milliseconds

Answer 1

Here you go in plugin format:

$.fn.setVal = function(value) {

    return this.each(function() {

        if ($.inArray( this.tagName.toLowerCase(), ['input', 'textarea', 'select'] ) != -1) {
            $(this).val( value );
        } else {
            $(this).text( value );
        }       
    });
};

Use it as follows:

$('input, span').setVal('Some Value');

---

See it here in action: http://jsfiddle.net/fkHLc/