Pushing value of Var into an Array

Question

I know this is probably a simple question, but I'm attempting a tweak in a plugin & js is not my expertise and I got stumped on how to do the following:

I have an array that can contain a number of values ($fruit) depending on what a user has entered. I want to add another variable to the array that isn't determined by manual input.

I know push should apply here but it doesn't seem to work, why does the following syntax not work?

var veggies = "carrot";
var fruitvegbasket = $('#fruit').val();
fruitvegbasket.push(veggies);

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update: I got it working doing this:

var fruit = $('#fruit').val();
var veggies = "carrot";
fruitvegbasket = new Array();
fruitvegbasket.push(fruit+","+veggies);

not sure that's the best way to do it, but it works. thanks all!

Answer 1

Off the top of my head I think it should be done like this:

var veggies = "carrot";
var fruitvegbasket = new Array();
fruitvegbasket.push(veggies);

Answer 2

jQuery is not the same as an array. If you want to append something at the end of a jQuery object, use:

$('#fruit').append(veggies);

or to append it to the end of a form value like in your example:

 $('#fruit').val($('#fruit').val()+veggies);

In your case, fruitvegbasket is a string that contains the current value of #fruit, not an array.

jQuery (jquery.com) allows for DOM manipulation, and the specific function you called val() returns the value attribute of an input element as a string. You can't push something onto a string.

Answer 3

.val() does not return an array from a DOM element: $('#fruit') is going to find the element in the document with an ID of #fruit and get its value (if it has a value).

Answer 4

Perhaps $('#fruit').val(); is not returning an array and you need something like:

$("#fruit").val() || []

http://docs.jquery.com/Attributes/val