Is this the correct way to call a textarea in jquery?

Question

This syntax for some reason isn't working and I'm wondering why. When I alert the values in the page, I can see everything but the textarea value. I'm not even getting an undefined.

var report  = $("textarea#report").val();

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Here is my html:

<textarea id="report" name="report" rows="25" cols="10" style="width:100%;height:200px;"><?php echo $_POST['report']; ?></textarea>

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<form id="rpt" action="">

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I have this code that Paolo helped me with last week. This is the start of the jquery code which also has some editor code mixed in with it

$(document).ready(function()
{
  $('.error').hide();
  WYSIWYG.attach('dfarReport', rpt);
  WYSIWYG_Core.addEvent(window, "load", function()
  {
    $('#Save').removeAttr('onclick').click(function()
    {

I tried adding Jonathan's suggested code to this but I get errors when I do this. I also changed "report" to something different just in case but that didn't help either.

IT'S WORKING !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

To get this to work. I added the following:

$(document).ready(function()
{
  $('.error').hide();
  WYSIWYG.attach('dfarReport', dfar);
  WYSIWYG_Core.addEvent(window, "load", function()
  {
    $('#Save').removeAttr('onclick').click(function()
    {
      WYSIWYG.updateTextArea('dfarReport');   <-------------- This is where it needs to go

Answer 1

EDIT

var report  = $("textarea#report").val();

should be working, however, if you're referencing it by id, then you don't need to use textarea as well

var report  = $("#report").val();

would be equivalent

Also, Are you sure about the name. no typos?

Edit

with OpenWYSIWYG, use WYSIWYG.updateTextArea('report'); before calling the value via javascript

Answer 2

That syntax should work. Step through the execution with a took like firebug to find out what's causing Javascript to fail. Also, see:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/144810/jquery-get-textarea-text

Answer 3

Also, be sure that you have the correct id. Try:

alert($("textarea#report").length);

Also check to make sure you didn't prepend the id with a #. I find what I do sometimes by accident is this:

<textarea id="#report"></textarea>

...instead of...

<textarea id="report"></textarea>

Answer 4

I would suggest that you run your whole page through a validator since it looks like your code should work. Also, are you doing it inside of a $(document).ready() function? If not, you might be executing the code before the page is fully loaded.

Answer 5

I just tried the following in asp.net MVC 1.0 and it worked fine: var rpt = $("#report").val(); alert(rpt);

The correct way is to use the id as shown above. Though $("textarea#report") will also work but it is slower. $("#report") uses DOM method getElementById and is the fasted way to get an element reference. Please keep in mind the ids are case sensitive.

Answer 6

try using simple javascript getElementById method and see if that works as following:

alert(document.getElementById("report").value);

if that works that jquery might have a problem and you might need to debug it using the debug version of jquery.