>Overwriting core methods is fine as long as you don't change the
>contract/behaviour of that method. Just think of a site that uses the
>form plugin and a different that relies on the standarf val() behaviour.
>An extension that can handle arrays to manipulate selects/checkboxes
>would be fine from my perspective.
After looking at the val() function, it might not be a good idea to
overwrite it. My guess is some people use the val() function like to see if
a checkbox was checked:
$("[EMAIL PROTECTED]'myCheckbox']:checked").val();
If this element was checked, it would give you a single value.
My concept of retrieving form values is a little different, as it's designed
to give you a consistent method to access any type of form field (so that if
you change the form field type--from a radio element to a checkbox--you
don't have to change your code.
So, with my concept, you really want to do just this:
$("[EMAIL PROTECTED]'myCheckbox']").getValue();
>>> 2) If you use an array to set the value on a text field, what value
>>> should
>>> we put in? Only the first position? Do we concatenate the array and
>>> use that
>>> value?
>> Good question! :-)
>I can't imagine a case where I'd have one or more text inputs and an
>array of strings and want to map one to the other.
One thing I learned from developing qForms--some people do some really
bizarre things with HTML forms. :)
>>> I'd probably start w/the methods that manipulate select elements (moving
>>> option elements around, transferring them to another select element,
>>> doing
>>> n-related select boxes, etc.)
>>
>> Yes. Sam Collett has some great option utilities as well, and they're
>> already jQuery plugins. That would be worth looking into.
>By merging those plugins/efforts a lot of duplication could be avoided.
>Modify the form plugin to handle all the generic manipulation stuff and
>provide plugins on top of that to do special stuff like what Dan mentioned.
I agree. I'd like to see the my code eventually rolled into the Form plug-in
(because I see being able to get/set a form field a very basic functionality
of a form plug-in) and then roll up additional functionality that's closely
tied to the Form Plug-in in another Plug-in that extends the Form Plug-in.
Quite frankly Jörn, I see your validation plug-in very closely tied into the
Form Plug-in. I'd imagine a lot of people use both plug-ins in their pages.
-Dan
