JQuery Ajax not updating DOM (I think) - javascript

I have a problem, in my page, I have a div that contains lets say two hidden fields with the value 0 and 2. I have a button that trigger an ajax query and change the div contents with the same hidden fields but with the value 1 and 2 respectively. The problem is that it seems like my javascript (using JQuery) is not aware of theses changes. When I inspect my page to see the html source code I see the values have changed but in the script when I'm doing:
$("#btn").click(function() {
alert($("#hidden1").val());
alert($("#hidden2").val());
});
It still show me the old value (0 and 2) like if the DOM hasn't been updated. Can someone help me please or tell me if it is normal and how to fix it.
Thanks for your time
Me!

Try this:
$("#btn").on('click', function() {
alert($("#hidden1").val());
alert($("#hidden2").val());
});

It's not that the DOM is not being updated, it's probably because your jQuery event is bound to the particular element at the time .click() is called. Since the DOM changed(you likely removed and added a new element of the same id), the function returns the values of the elements you discarded(because it remains bound to it even if removed from DOM).
Use the live() method or on() as a replacement for your click() handler. This method provided by jQuery will not bind to a particular DOM element at the time it is called, but does a dynamic lookup every time a click is detected.

Related

jQuery selector stores object? How to force it not to?

I have a dropdown ( < select > ) element and a container.
<div class='container' />
<script>
var dropdown = "<select class='multi-dropdown'> ... </select>"
</script>
When the value is changed, You get another of it.
It is logical, that this only happens when the document is ready ( the first one is made there ), and when the client modifies the last one.
$(document).ready( function(){
$('.container').append(dropdown);
$('.multi-dropdown:last').change(function(){
$('.container').append(dropdown);
});
});
Seems to be a working code for me. But what I noticed is, this is not working with the next appended dropdown element. Also if I change the original one, it fires.
My theory is, maybe jQuery already stored the original object as the :last , so it won't select a new element again even if I add new "last" ones.
or
The freshly created element ( this way ) isn't even selectable with jQuery.
Please argue in favor, or against, these are just my ideas.
The issue is that you're newly appended SELECT doesn't ever get an event bound to it. Just because you used the class to bind the change even for the initial SELECT, that doesn't automatically apply to every newly added element to the DOM.
Read up on delegated events, like for the on() function. Or use something like livequery.
Because you are binding the change handler to the :last element at page startup, if the last element changes dynamically it will not be changed accordingly; try and read deeply delegation using on method instead.
Like:
$(document).ready( function(){
$('.container').append(dropdown);
$('body').on('change','.multi-dropdown:last',function(){
$('.container').append(dropdown);
});
});

Handle stuff after dom changes

I've got a page with some Javascript / jQuery stuff, for example:
(function()
{
$('.tip').tooltip();
$('.test').click(function()
{
alert('Clicked!')
});
}();
On the page I insert some HTML with jQuery so the DOM changes. For example, I insert a extra element with the class "tip" or "test". The just new inserted elements doesn't work because jQuery is working with the non-manipulated DOM and the just inserted elements aren't there. So I've searched around and came to this solution for the "click":
$('body').on('click','.click',function()
{
alert('Clicked!')
});
I don't understand why, but this way it's working with the manipulated DOM and the jQuery stuff works on the new inserted elements. So my first question is, why does this work and just the click() function not? And the second question, why do I have to point to the "body"?
Finally, my third question is, how get this done with the tooltip?
I know that there is so many information about this subject (previous the delegate() and live() function I've read) but I can't found a explanation about it. And I can't get my third question solved with the information I found.
I'm looking forward to your responses!
Extra question:
4) Is it recommended to point always to the "body" for this kind of situations? It's always there but for possible performance issues?
So my first question is, why does this work and just the click()
function not?
Because the event handler is now delegated to a parent element, so it remains even after replacing/manipulating child elements.
Ancient article on event delegation for your perusal - but the concepts remain the same:
http://www.sitepoint.com/javascript-event-delegation-is-easier-than-you-think/
And the second question, why do I have to point to the "body"
You don't, any suitable parent element will do. For example, any direct parent (a div wrapper, for instance) which does not get replaced.
Finally, my third question is, how get this done with the tooltip?
You need to re-initialize your tooltip plugin on the newly inserted elements. For example:
$.get("foo.html", function (html) {
$("#someDiv").html(html);
$("#someDiv").find(".tip").tooltip();
});
The click() event doesn't work when you manipulate the DOM because JQuery is not watching for DOM changes. When you bind the click() event it is selecting the elements that are on the page at that time. New ones are not in the list unless you explicitly bind the event.
Because you have pointed the click() event on the body. JQuery then checks to see if the target of the click matches any of the event handlers (like what you have created) match the element clicked. This way any new elements will get the event 'associated' with them.
Because the tooltip isn't an event that you can place on the body, you will need to re-initialize it when the element is created.
EDIT:
For your fourth question, is it depends. The advantage of binding to the body is that you don't accidentally bind an event to an element more than once. The disadvantage is that you are adding event handlers that need to be checked on each event and this can lead to performance issues.
As for your concerns about DRY, put the initialization of the tooltips into a function and call that when you add them. Trying to avoid having the same function call is a little overkill in this regard, IMO.
Events are bound to the specific object you are binding it to.
So something like $('.tip').tooltip() will perform the tooltip() functionality on $('.tip') which is actually just a collection of objects that satisfies the css selector .tip. The thing you should take note of is, that collection is not dynamic, it is basically a "database" query of the current page, and returns a resultset of HTML DOM objects wrapped by jQuery.
Therefore calling tooptip() on that collection will only perform the tooltip functionality on the objects within that collection, anything that was not in that collection when tooltip is called will not have the tooltip functionality. So adding an element that satisfies the .tip selector, after the tooltip() call, will not give it the tooltip functionality.
Now, $('body').on('click','.click', func) is actually binding the click event to the body tag (which should always exist :P), but what happens is it captures whether the click event has passed through an element your target css selector (.click in this case), so since the check is done dynamically, new elements will be captured.
This is a relatively short summary of what's going on... I hope it helped
UPDATE:
Best way for your tooltip thing is to bind tooltip after you have added elements, e.g.
$('#container').load('www.example.com/stuff', function() {
$('.tip', $(this)).tooltip();
});

using jQuery to change, only the elements that were loaded via ajax

For each checkbox on the web page, I replace it with a slider that I borrowed from jsfiddle.net/gnQUe/170/
This is done by going through the elements when the document is loaded.
Now the problem is that when more content is loaded via ajax, the new checkboxes are not transformed.
To solve the problem, I used AjaxComplete event to go through all the elements again and replace the checkboxes with sliders.
Now the problem happens that elements that were already replaced, get two sliders. To avoid that I check if the checkbox is hidden and next element is div of class "slider-frame", then don't process the re-process the element.
But I have a lot of other such controls as well, and I am presume I am not the only one that has this problem. Is there another easy way around it?
There exists jQuery live/on( http://api.jquery.com/on/ ) event but it requires an event as an argument? whereas I would like to change the look of my controls when they are rendered.
Another example of the same problem is to extend some controls that are loaded via ajax with jQuerys autocomplete plugin.
Is there a better way to accomplish this other than changing some attributes on the element.
To summarize, on document load I would like to process every element in DOM, but when more elements are loaded via ajax then I want to change only the new elements.
I would assume that when the element's are transformed into a slider, a class is added to them. So just add a not clause.
$(".MySelector").not(".SomeClassThatSliderAddsToElement").slider({});
So in the case of your code do something like this
$('.slider-button').not(".sliderloaded").addClass("sliderloaded").toggle(function(){
$(this).addClass('on').html('YES');
$('#slider').val(true);
},function(){
$(this).removeClass('on').html('NO');
$('#slider').val(false);
});
Since you said you do not want to add anything else, how about you change the toggle function to click.
$(document).on("click", ".slider-button", function(){
var elem = $(this);
elem.toggleClass("on");
var state = elem.hasClass("on");
elem.text(state?"YES":"NO");
elem.parent().next().val(state);
});
Running fiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/d9uFs/

Recursive jQuery function to amend select option values

I have a form that I am trying to alter with jQuery. Basically, my form has two elements and I need to change the value of the first option in each of them. However, there is an "add more" option that uses AJAX to dynamically generate another element that also needs changed. This add more button can be clicked an unlimited amount of times.
Right now I have this:
$(document).ready(function(){
$("#myname-0-field option:first").val("None");
$("#myname-1-field option:first").val("None");
});
This works fine, but once the "add more" button is clicked, I have more elements called "#myname-2-field", "#myname-3-field", "#myname-4-field" etc. These obviously aren't affected by adding another line into my jQuery as the document has already loaded when they are added.
So the real question is, can someone point me in the right direction of writing a function that can react when the new element is added and change it. If possible, I'm also looking for the function to be aware and look for "#myname-X-field option:first" for tidyness.
use live() function
Then using each function set value
From the jQuery API look live function
Maybe you could add class to your element, so that finding particular element would be easier and it would not add event to other similar elements.
In the example I have a Li with class
$('li.myClass').live('click', function() {
$(this).val(); // this is the getter for clicked value
$(this).val("some_value_here"); // this is the setter for clicked value
});
Now you can add more elements (that has myClass class) and it will have a click event.
Btw. if you know that all elements are inside some container (div for example) then you can write more efficient jQuery using delegate.
$('#container_id').delegate('li.myClass', 'click', function () {
});
This is more efficient because it looks your new elements only under "containter" not from the whole DOM structure.

How to work with dynamically created fields?

I have web layout, which can contains several links on it. Those links are dynamically created, using AJAX functions. And it works ok.
But, I don't know how can I work with those "dynamically created links" (ie. how to call some JS or jQuery function if I click on them). I guess that browser can not recognize them, since there are created after page is loaded.
Is there some function, that can "re-render" my page and elements on it?
Tnx in adv on your help!
You can use the 2 following methods jQuery provides:
The first one, is the .live() method, and the other is the .delegate() method.
The usage of the first one is very simple:
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#dynamicElement").live("click", function() {
//do something
});
}
As you can see, the first argument is the event you want to bind, and the second is a function which handles the event. The way this works is not exactly like a "re-rendering". The common way to do this ( $("#dynamicElement").click(...) or $("#dynamicElement").bind("click", ...) ) works by attaching the event handler of a determinate event to the DOM Element when the DOM has properly loaded ($(document).ready(...) ). Now, obviously, this won't work with dynamically generated elements, because they're not present when the DOM first loads.
The way .live() works is, instead of attaching the vent handler to the DOM Element itself, it attaches it with the document element, taking advantage of the bubbling-up property of JS & DOM (When you click the dynamically generated element and no event handler is attached, it keeps looking to the top until it finds one).
Sounds pretty neat, right? But there's a little technical issue with this method, as I said, it attaches the event handler to the top of the DOM, so when you click the element, your browser has to transverse all over the DOM tree, until it finds the proper event handler. Process which is very inefficient, by the way. And here's where appears the .delegate() method.
Let's assume the following HTML estructure:
<html>
<head>
...
</head>
<body>
<div id="links-container">
<!-- Here's where the dynamically generated content will be -->
</div>
</body>
</html>
So, with the .delegate() method, instead of binding the event handler to the top of the DOM, you just could attach it to a parent DOM Element. A DOM Element you're sure it's going to be somewhere up of the dynamically generated content in the DOM Tree. The closer to them, the better this will work. So, this should do the magic:
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#links-container").delegate("#dynamicElement", "click", function() {
//do something
});
}
This was kind of a long answer, but I like to explain the theory behind it haha.
EDIT: You should correct your markup, it's invalid because: 1) The anchors does not allow the use of a value attribute, and 2) You can't have 2 or more tags with the same ID. Try this:
<a class="removeLineItem" id="delete-1">Delete</a>
<a class="removeLineItem" id="delete-2">Delete</a>
<a class="removeLineItem" id="delete-3">Delete</a>
And to determine which one of the anchors was clicked
$(document).ready(function() {
$("#links-container").delegate(".removeLineItem", "click", function() {
var anchorClicked = $(this).attr("id"),
valueClicked = anchorClicked.split("-")[1];
});
}
With that code, you will have stored in the anchorClicked variable the id of the link clicked, and in the valueClicked the number associated to the anchor.
In your page initialization code, you can set up handlers like this:
$(function() {
$('#myForm input.needsHandler').live('click', function(ev) {
// .. handle the click event
});
});
You just need to be able to identify the input elements by class or something.
How are these links dynamically created? You can use use the correct selector, given that they are using the same class name or resides in the same tag, etc.
consider the html form
<form>
<input type="text" id="id" name="id"/>
<input type="button" id="check" name="check value="check"/>
</form>
jquery script
$('#check).click(function() {
if($('#id).val() == '') {
alert('load the data!!!!);
}
});
here on clicking the button the script check the value of the textbox id to be null. if its null it will return an alert message....
i thin this is the solution you are looking for.....
have a nice day..
Noramlly , the browser process response HTML and add it to DOM tree , but sometimes , current defined events just not work , simply reinitialize the event when u call the ajax request ..
All you need to do to work with dynamically created elements is create identifiers you can locate them with. Try the following code in console of Firebug or the developer tools for Chrome or IE.
$(".everyonelovesstackoverflow").html('<a id="l1" href="http://www.google.com">google</a> <a id="l2" href="http://www.yahoo.com">yahoo</a>');
$("#l1").click(function(){alert("google");});
$("#l2").click(function(){alert("yahoo");});
You should now have two links where the ad normally is that were dynamically created, and than had an onclick handler added to bring up an alert (I didn't block default behaviour, so it will cause you to leave the page.)
jQuery's .live will allow you to automatically add handlers to newly created element.
If your links are coming in via AJAX, you can set the onclick attributes on the server. Just output the links into the AJAX like this:
Holy crap I'm a link
The return false makes sure the link doesn't reload the page.
Hope this helps!

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