is there a way to find the value in the cell before it was changed using javascript.

Question

Hi,

is there a way to find out the value in the cell before and after it is changed in javascript or jQuery? I am thinking I might have to use combination of events like onfocus and onblur. please let me know.

Thanks, sridhar.

Answer 1

You could use jQuery to write the old value to a hidden field on the page and then have access to both the current value from the edited field, and the old value from the hidden field.

Answer 2

Ofcourse it is possible. Method I prefer to store temporary data is to store them inside object/variable. I am just not sure if you refer to table cell or database cell, but essentially it makes no difference. Using focus it would go like this:

var $temp_before;
var $temp_after;
$('#cell_id').focus(function(){
  $temp_before = this.html(); // or this.text() depending on what you want to record
  /*... call to function to change it ...*/
  $temp_after = this.html();
});

As comment from Cory Larson suggests, you can also store data inside the element itself using jQuery data.

$('#cell_id').focus(function(){
  this.data("old_content", this.html());
  /*... call to function to change it ...*/
  this.data("new_content", this.html());
});