Develop Reference

Preventing execution of a function if an alert has been triggered at the same time from a different function

Question
Action A triggers function B and function C concurrently(?!).
If B throws alert can I
prevent C from executing, perhaps, by using some kind of general listener function?
The solution I seek, does not involve adding specific listener to function C, it must remain generalised.
My Example
I have the following code below that gets triggered when a button within a modal is pressed. This deletes the contents until a GET method is processed and user is returned to the redirected page.
$( ".loadingEnabled" ).click(function( event ) {
$(".loadingSpinner").css("display","block");
$(".myModalContent").hide();
$(".modal-header").html("<b>Processing your request</b>");
$(".modal-footer").hide();
});
Within the modal I have just few simple validation scripts,e.g.,:
} else if ($("#name").val().length < 2){
event.preventDefault();
alert("You cannot proceed without entering your name")
}
So with the current set up, the user will trigger the loadingEnabled click function, however, if the data is not valid the loadingEnabled will trigger hide() and css() indefinitely as the submit dissapears and preventDefault() is triggered.
Question is, can I introduce something in loadingEnabled function that would prevent it from executing, if an alert is triggered?
I can think of workarounds. I am just wondering if there is anything for such a case.

a couple of suggestions.
You could return a boolean from your validation and make the loadingEnabled code conditional on that:
$( ".loadingEnabled" ).click(function( event ) {
if(validation()){
$(".loadingSpinner").css("display","block");
$(".myModalContent").hide();
$(".modal-header").html("<b>Processing your request</b>");
$(".modal-footer").hide();
}
});
then (in validation function) :
return true; // assuming that validation has passed
} else if ($("#name").val().length < 2){
event.preventDefault();
alert("You cannot proceed without entering your name")
return false;
}
or 2. You could invert your flow, calling the validation function on button click, name the other function and only call that if validation passes

I did not find a the solution I had in mind, however, the solution I implemented involved:
instantiating a new global variable validated to true
positioning loadingEnabled function after validation function in order for the system to execute validation first.
Added a line in each failed validation to set validated to false if input was not valid and if all validation passed set validated to true
Set a conditional if statement to only execute loadingEnabled if validation is true.
The above solution ensured that loadingEnabled can be re-used.

Simple jQuery function not picking up click function

I am having a go at my very first jQuery function. What needs to happen is that a form will be assigned to the function. When a user clicks on the submit button it needs to first do validation on each :input field within the the function.
I am assigning a form as the selector for my function:
$("form[name='form_name']").validator();
This then gets passed into the function and is assigned to a function property called "selected_form". Within my jQuery function I have another function which needs to wait for the submit button to be clicked, and after that it needs to iterate through all of the :input form elements and handle simple validation.
The issue now is:
a) Within my jQuery function I am making a call to return validate(); Validate then checks to see whether the button as clicked. I suspect that because the function is run and there was no button clicked, it continues and basically returns the validate() function back as false without doing any checks. I assume I will need to customize this to almost wait until the button is pressed, but I really have no idea how to do that.
b) $(selected_form+" :input").each(function() { ... } does not work as it appears to not be able to use that as a selected. I need to iterate through the "selected_form" property and select only the :input fields. Any assistance?
c) If you have any other suggestions or best practices for me regarding building a proper jQuery function please assist, this is my first attempt and I would rather learn the best practices now as appose to following my own ideas.
(function($) {
$.fn.validator = function(user_options) {
var default_options = {
exclusions: false,
rules: false,
submit_btn_name: 'event_form_submit'
};
var selected_form = this;
var selected_element = false;
var element_type = false;
var options = $.extend(default_options,user_options);
function validate() {
// Run only if form has been submitted: (this does not appear to work now, the form gets submitted without the return false;
$("input[type='"+options.submit_name+"']").click(function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
// The selector here appears to be wrong?
$(selected_form+" :input").each(function() {
// Individual element validation will happen here, for now I am just looking to log the element types :)
selected_element = this;
console.log(get_element_type());
});
return false;
});
return false;
};
function get_element_type() {
return element_type = element.type;
}
return validate();
}
})(jQuery);
// Run the validator:
$(document).ready(function() {
$("form[name='tepg_form_processor']").validator();
});

As jalynn2 and others have mentioned, my selector was incorrect. Fixed and working :)

Getting an assigned jQuery variable to "re-query"

I'm trying to use jQuery to build a home-made validator. I think I found a limitation in jQuery: When assigning a jQuery value to a json variable, then using jQuery to add more DOM elements to the current page that fit the variable's query, there doesn't seem to be a way to access those DOM elements added to the page which fit the json variable's query.
Please consider the following code:
var add_form = {
$name_label: $("#add-form Label[for='Name']"),
$name: $("#add-form #Name"),
$description_label: $("#add-form Label[for='Description']"),
$description: $("#add-form #Description"),
$submit_button: $("#add-form input#Add"),
$errors: $("#add-form .error"),
error_marker: "<span class='error'> *</span>"
}
function ValidateForm() {
var isValid = true;
add_form.$errors.remove();
if (add_form.$name.val().length < 1 ) {
add_form.$name_label.after(add_form.error_marker);
isValid = false;
}
if (add_form.$description.val().length < 1) {
add_form.$description_label.after(add_form.error_marker);
isValid = false;
}
return isValid
}
$(function(){
add_form.$submit_button.live("click", function(e){
e.preventDefault();
if(ValidateForm())
{
//ajax form submission...
}
});
})
An example is availible here: http://jsfiddle.net/Macxj/3/
First, I make a json variable to represent the html add form. Then, I make a function to validate the form. Last, I bind the click event of the form's submit button to validating the form.
Notice that I'm using the jQuery after() method to put a span containing an '*' after every invalid field label in the form. Also notice that I'm clearing the asterisks of the previous submission attempt from the form before re-validating it (this is what fails).
Apparently, the call to add_form.$errors.remove(); doesn't work because the $errors variable only points to the DOM elements that matched its query when it was created. At that point in time, none of the labels were suffixed with error_marker variable.
Thus, the jQuery variable doesn't recognize the matching elements of it's query when trying to remove them because they didn't exist when the variable was first assigned. It would be nice if a jQuery variable HAD AN eval() METHOD that would re-evaluate its containing query to see if any new DOM elements matched it. But alas...
Any suggestions?
Thanks in advance!

You are correct that a jQuery object is not "live" – that is, the set of elements in the jQuery object is not dynamically updated. (This is a good thing.)
If you really want to update an arbitrary jQuery object, you can get the selector used to create the object from .selector:
var els = $('#form input');
els.selector // '#form input'
So you could do els = $(els.selector); to re-query the DOM.
Note, however, that if you modified the collection after the initial selector (functions like add, filter, children, etc.), or if the jQuery object was created without using a selector (by passing a DOMElement), then .selector will be pretty much useless, since the selector will be empty, incorrect, or even potentially invalid.
Better is to re-structure your code in such a way that you aren't holding on to a stale jQuery object; the other answers make some good suggestions.
Also, please make sure you're validating input server-side too!

For the objects that are going to be changing, instead of making the JSON object reference a static value, make it a function:
$errors: function() { return $("#add-form .error"); },
since it's a function, it will re-evaluate the error fields every time you call add_form.$errors().

Your approach to the problem has got many structural problems:
Avoid using global variables
There may not always be just one form on the page that you are validating. What if one day you will decide that you will have several forms. Your add_form variable is a global variable and therefore would be conflicting.
Do not use the submit button click event for detecting form submissions.
What if a form is submitted by a js call like $("form").submit(); or by the enter key?
Store the selectors instead of the DOM objects if you are not certain that the objects already exist at the creation time of the configuration object.
.live is deprecated. Use .on instead.
It is 3. that will solve your actual problem, but I strongly recommend addressing all 4 issues.
For 2, the best place to attach the validator is not on the submit button, but on submit event of the form. Something like this:
$("#add-form").submit(function(event) {
event.preventDefault();
if (validateForm(this))
$.ajax({
url: $(this).attr("action"),
data: $(this).serialize(),
//ETC
});
});
Note how the form is now also much easier to access. Your configuration object no longer needs to store a reference to the submit button.
Your configuration object could now be simplified to be something like this:
{
name_label: "Label[for='Name']",
name: "#Name",
description_label: "Label[for='Description']",
description: "#Description",
errors: ".error",
error_marker: "<span class='error'> *</span>"
}
Within validateForm, you can use these selector as follows:
var $name_label = $(configuration.name_label, this); //Finds the label within the current form.
Now, to allow different configuration parameters for each form use something like this:
function enableValidation(form, configuration) {
$.extend(configuration, {
//Default configuration parameters here.
});
function validateForm(form) {
//Your original function here with modifications.
}
$(form).submit(funciton(e) {
if (!validateForm(this))
e.preventDefault();
});
}
function enableAjax(form) {
$(form).submit(function(e){
if (!e.isDefaultPrevented()) {
e.preventDefault();
$.ajax(...);
}
});
}
$(function() {
enableValidation("#add-form", {/*specialized config parameters here*/});
enableAjax("#add-form");
});

Can I control the order in which javascript / jQuery events fire?

Background
I've got asp.net webform with a grid, and when users update textboxes in that grid, the onchange event kicks off a WebMethod call and updates the rest of the changed row. Nothing is saved at that time -- we're just updating the UI.
To commit the changes, you click the save button.
This actually works reliably in almost every scenario. However, there is one very persistant one that it feels like I should be able to solve, but it's time to call in the specialists.
The Problem Scenario
I'm using jQuery to capture the enter key, and unfortunately that event fires first, causing the page to submit before the callback completes. The row is not updated correctly. Stale and bewildering data is saved.
Update
I don't think you can make the enter behavior depend on the callback, because you could save without changing a row. In that case, if you didn't change a row, it would never save.
Now if there was some way to inspect javascript's internal list of things to do, or maybe create my own and then manage it somehow, that would work. But that's some heavy lifting for something that should be easy. So unless an expert tells me otheriwse, I have to assume that's wrong.
Attempts
Right now I'm using the built-in jQuery events and I've got this elaborate setTimeout persisting the fact that a save was attempted, pausing long enough for the WebMethod to at least get called, and relying on the callback to do the submit. But it turns out javascript ansychrony doesn't work the way I hoped, and the onchange event doesn't even fire until that chunk of code completes. That was surprising.
I was thinking I could use my own little object to queue up these events in the right order and find a clever way to trigger that, etc.
This all seems like the wrong direction. Surely this is insane overkill, this is a common problem and I'm overlooking a simple solution because I don't work in javascript 24/7.
Right?
Code
Here's what I've got right this minute. This obviously doesn't work -- I was trying to take advantage of the async nature of jquery, but all of this apparently has to conclude before the row's onchange event event fires:
$(document).bind("keypress", function (e) {
if (e.keyCode == 13) {
handleEnter();
return false; //apparently I should be using e.preventDefault() here.
}
});
function handleEnter() {
setTimeout(function () {
if (recalculatingRow) { //recalculatingRow is a bit managed by the onchange code.
alert('recalculating...');
return true; //recur
}
//$('input[id$="ButtonSave"]').click();
alert('no longer recalculating. click!');
return false;
}, 1000);
}
And then a typical row looks like this. Note that I'm not using jquery to bind this:
<input name="ctl00$MainContent$GridOrderItems$ctl02$TextOrderItemDose" type="text" value="200.00" maxlength="7" id="ctl00_MainContent_GridOrderItems_ctl02_TextOrderItemDose" onchange="recalculateOrderItemRow(this);" style="width:50px;" />
I could post the code for recalculateOrderItemRow, but it's really long and right now the problem is that it doens't fire until the after keypress event concludes.
Update Dos
According to Nick Fitzgerald (and man is that a cool article) the use of setTimeout should cause this to become async. Digging further into interactions between setTimeout and jQuery, as well as interactions between normal javascript events and jQuery events.

Preventing ENTER shouldn't be causing you so much trouble! Make sure you have something like this on your code:
$(document).on('keydown', 'input', function(e) {
if(e.keyCode == 13) {
e.preventDefault();
}
});
UPDATE
It looks like you do want to save on ENTER, but only after the UI is updated on change. That is possible. You could use a flag a Matthew Blancarte suggested above, trigger save from the change callback, and get rid of the setTimeout.
But I wouldn't recommend that. You are better off relying solely on the save button for saving. If you don't, your users will have to wait for two async operations to complete before saving is finished. So you'd have to block the UI, or keep track of all async operations, aborting some as needed. I think it's not worthy, ENTER becomes less intuitive for the users if saving takes too long.

The hideous mass of workarounds below, which effectively took me all day today and half of yesterday to write, seems to solve every permutation.
The amusing thing is that enter itself doesn't trigger onchange, if you call e.preventDefault(). Why would it? The change doesn't actually happen until the default behavior of clicking the save button occurs.
Very little else about this is amusing.
//Used in handleEnter and GridOrderItems.js to handle a deferred an attempt to save by hitting enter (see handleEnter).
var isSaving = false;
var saveOnID = '';
//When one of the fields that trigger WebMethods get focus, we put the value in here
//so we can determine whether the field is dirty in handleEnter.
var originalVal = 0;
//These fields trigger callbacks. On focus, we need to save their state so we can
//determine if they're dirty in handleEnter().
$('[id$=TextOrderItemDose], [id$=TextOrderItemUnits]').live("focus", function() {
originalVal = this.value;
});
$(document).bind("keypress", function (e) {
if (e.keyCode == 13) { //enter pressed.
e.preventDefault();
handleEnter();
}
});
//Problem:
//In the products grid, TextOrderItemDose and TextOrderItemUnits both have js in their onchange events
//that trigger webmethod calls and use the results to update the row. Prsssing enter is supposed to
//save the form, but if you do it right after changing one of those text fields, the row doesn't always
//get updated due to the async nature of js's events. That leads to stale data being saved.
//Solution:
//First we capture Enter and prevent its default behaviors. From there, we check to see if one of our
//special boxes has focus. If so, we do some contortions to figure out if it's dirty, and use isSaving
//and saveOnID to defer the save operation until the callback returns.
//Otherwise, we save as normal.
function handleEnter() {
var focusedElement = $("[id$=TextOrderItemDose]:focus, [id$=TextOrderItemUnits]:focus")
//did we press enter with a field that triggers a callback selected?
if (isCallbackElement(focusedElement) && isElementDirty(focusedElement)) {
//Set details so that the callback can know that we're saving.
isSaving = true;
saveOnID = focusedElement.attr('id');
//Trigger blur to cause the callback, if there was a change. Then bring the focus right back.
focusedElement.trigger("change");
focusedElement.focus();
} else {
forceSave();
}
}
function isCallbackElement(element) {
return (element.length == 1);
}
function isElementDirty(element) {
if (element.length != 1)
return false;
return (element.val() != originalVal);
}
function forceSave() {
isSaving = false;
saveOnID = '';
$('input[id$="ButtonSave"]').click();
}
This gets called in the change event for the textboxes:
function recalculateOrderItemRow(textbox) {
//I'm hiding a lot of code that gathers and validates form data. There is a ton and it's not interesting.
//Call the WebMethod on the server to calculate the row. This will trigger a callback when complete.
PageMethods.RecalculateOrderItemRow($(textbox).attr('id'),
orderItemDose,
ProductItemSize,
orderItemUnits,
orderItemUnitPrice,
onRecalculateOrderItemRowComplete);
}
And then, at the end of the WebMethod callback code we pull the updated form values out, put the caret where it needs to be using jquery.caret, and check to see if we need to force a save:
function onRecalculateOrderItemRowComplete(result) {
var sender, row;
sender = $('input[id="' + result.Sender + '"]');
row = $(sender).closest('tr');
row.find('input[id$="TextOrderItemDose"]').val(result.Dose);
row.find('input[id$="TextOrderItemUnits"]').val(result.Units);
row.find('span[id$="SpanTotalPrice"]').html(formatCurrency(result.TotalPrice));
calculateGrandTotalPrice();
$(document.activeElement).select();
if (isSaving && saveOnID == result.Sender) {
forceSave();
}
}
result.Sender is the ID of the calling control, which I stuffed into the WebMethod call and then returned. saveOnID may not be perfect, and it might actually be even better to maintain a counter of active/uncallback-ed WebMethod calls to be totally sure that everything wraps up before save. Whew.

Can you post your javascript? Sounds like you're on the right track. I would change my OnChange events to increment a variable before making the AJAX call. I'll call the variable inProcess and initialize it to zero. When the AJAX call comes back, I would update the inProcess to the current value minus one. On the Enter key event, I would check to that inProcess equals zero. If not, you could either warn the user or set a timeout to try again in a bit.

You could unbind the Enter key capture while you are in the onChange event, then rebind it at the end of the callback function. If you post some code, I could give a more specific answer.

It sounds like you shouldn't be calling the WebMethod asynchronously. Call it synchronously, and on success, save your data.

nested object events

I'm working on a validation project and I currently have it set up where my inputs are listed as objects. I currently have this code to setup and run the events:
setup method and functions used
function setup(obj) {
obj.getElement().onfocus = function() {startVal(obj)}
obj.getElement().onblur = function() {endVal(obj)}
}
function startVal(obj) {
obj.getElement().onkeyup = validate(obj)
}
function endVal(obj) {
obj.getElement().onkeyup = ""
}
Take note to how I have it where the onkeyup event should set when the object is receives focus, However when I activate the input it acts like I tagged the validate() function directly to the onfocus and it only validates when I initially focus the input.
edit the reason I have it set up this way is so that I don't have every single one of my form elements validating each time I launch an onkeyup event(which would be a lot since forms usually involve a decent amount of typing). I got it to work by simply attaching the validate() function to the onkeyup event. I just would prefer limit it this way so the there's no unnecessary processing.
Can you not set events with other events or is there something more specific that I'm doing wrong?
Any help is appreciated!
Here is some additional information that might help:
getElement Method
function getElement() {
return document.getElementById(this.id)
}
setEvents function
function setEvents() {
firstName.setup(firstName)
}

You are calling validate directly. Unless it is returning a function, it won't work (maybe you should have read my other answer more thoroughly ;)). I think you want:
obj.getElement().onkeyup = function() {validate(obj)};
And as I stated in my comment, there is no reason to add or remove the event handler on focus. The keyup event is only raised if the element receives input, so not when other elements receive input.