How do I change a variable based on a checkbox during validation

Question

I've successfully pulled the checked value from a radio button group with jQuery 1.4 using the following code:

var myFirstVar = $("input[name='myFirstVar']:checked").val();

How would I alter this code to find out whether a check-box was checked, and to change the value of the var based on whether it is checked or not.

I tried many things, but here is an example of what I thought would work:

    if ($("input[name='mySecondVar']:checked")) {
     var mySecondVar = "Yes";
    }
    else {
     var mySecondVar = "No";
    }

Any insight on simply changing the value whether the box is checked or not would be great.

Answer 1

Try this:

var mySecondVar = $("input[name='mySecondVar']:checked").length ? "Yes" : "No";

Answer 2

The ":checked" part of the selector is just telling jQuery to only select items that are checked. jQuery selectors always return a result (the jQuery object), so simply putting the selector in the if clause isn't sufficient. You want to see whether the result actually included any elements, so $("input[name='mySecondVar']:checked").length will work for your conditional clause (since Javascript interprets 0 as "false").

Another approach would be

if ($("input[name='mySecondVar']")[0].checked) {
     var mySecondVar = "Yes";
    }
    else {
     var mySecondVar = "No";
    }