jquery array question

Question

I have the following :

<script>
$().ready(function() {

 $("#myVal#").blur(function() {
   var arr = jQuery.makeArray(  $("#myArr").val() )
if ( $("#myVal").val().indexOf(arr) == -1 || $("#myVal").val().indexOf(arr) ==0) {
    arr.push($("#myVal").val());
}
$("#myArr").val(arr)
});
});
</script>
<form action="" method="post" name="myF" id="myF">
 <input type="text" name="myVal" id="myVal" value="">
 <input type="text" name="myArr" id="myArr" value="">
 <br/>
<input type="submit" name="submit" id="submit" value="go">
</form>

I am trying to check and see if a particular value entered to myVal is already in myArr. If so, don't add to the array. If not, then add to the array. However, the array keeps growing with duplicate values.

what am i doing wrong?

thanks in advance.

Answer 1

try changing

 $("#myVal#").blur(function() {
         ^^^

with

 $("#myVal").blur(function() {
         ^^^

Answer 2

First, makeArray is meant to take array-like objects as input, not strings. And I don't see the purpose here. If you have an actual array arr (perhaps made using split), you can do:

if ( $.inArray($("#myVal").val(), arr) == -1)

Your current code calls String.indexOf(arr), so arr is implicitly converted to a (comma-separated)string. Then you search for the array string in the new value. This is clearly not what you want.

Answer 3

use .inArray() to detect if a specific value is in an array.

if($.inArray($('#myVal').val(), arr))
  alert('yay');

You can't use .makeArray() like you do in your example. .makeArray() generates an array out of a array like object, thus , it needs an objects as parameter.

Reference: .inArray()

Answer 4

I believe what you're after is something like this using $.inArray():

$(function() {
 $("#myVal").blur(function() {
   var arr = $("#myArr").val().split(',');
   if ($.inArray($("#myVal").val(), arr) == -1) arr.push($("#myVal").val());
   $("#myArr").val(arr.join(','));
 });
});​

Try a demo here, now this would break if the value had a comma...just choose an appropriate delimiter. What this is going is taking the string out, calling .split() to turn it into an array, splitting the items at the provided delimiter, adding the value if it's missing ($.inArray() returns the postion of the element, -1 if it's not found). Then we're just calling .join() with the same delimiter to turn it back into a string.

Answer 5

this did the trick :

    $().ready(function() {
             var arr = [];
           $("#myVal").blur(function() {
 if( $.inArray($('#myVal').val(), arr) == -1) {
  arr.push($("#myVal").val());
 }
    $("#myArr").val(arr);
});
});

thanks!