Jquery – Best way to remove an event handler in jQuery

html-inputjquery

I have an input type="image". This acts like the cell notes in Microsoft Excel. If someone enters a number into the text box that this input-image is paired with, I setup an event handler for the input-image. Then when the user clicks the image, they get a little popup to add some notes to the data.

My problem is that when a user enters a zero into the text box, I need to disable the input-image's event handler. I have tried the following, but to no avail.

$('#myimage').click(function { return false; });

Best Answer

jQuery ≥ 1.7

With jQuery 1.7 onward the event API has been updated, .bind()/.unbind() are still available for backwards compatibility, but the preferred method is using the on()/off() functions. The below would now be,

$('#myimage').click(function() { return false; }); // Adds another click event
$('#myimage').off('click');
$('#myimage').on('click.mynamespace', function() { /* Do stuff */ });
$('#myimage').off('click.mynamespace');

jQuery < 1.7

In your example code you are simply adding another click event to the image, not overriding the previous one:

$('#myimage').click(function() { return false; }); // Adds another click event

Both click events will then get fired.

As people have said you can use unbind to remove all click events:

$('#myimage').unbind('click');

If you want to add a single event and then remove it (without removing any others that might have been added) then you can use event namespacing:

$('#myimage').bind('click.mynamespace', function() { /* Do stuff */ });

and to remove just your event:

$('#myimage').unbind('click.mynamespace');

Related Solutions

Javascript – n “exists” function for jQuery

In JavaScript, everything is 'truthy' or 'falsy', and for numbers 0 means false, everything else true. So you could write:

if ($(selector).length)

You don't need that >0 part.

Javascript – How to upload files asynchronously with jQuery

With HTML5 you can make file uploads with Ajax and jQuery. Not only that, you can do file validations (name, size, and MIME type) or handle the progress event with the HTML5 progress tag (or a div). Recently I had to make a file uploader, but I didn't want to use Flash nor Iframes or plugins and after some research I came up with the solution.

The HTML:

<form enctype="multipart/form-data">
    <input name="file" type="file" />
    <input type="button" value="Upload" />
</form>
<progress></progress>

First, you can do some validation if you want. For example, in the .on('change') event of the file:

$(':file').on('change', function () {
  var file = this.files[0];

  if (file.size > 1024) {
    alert('max upload size is 1k');
  }

  // Also see .name, .type
});

Now the $.ajax() submit with the button's click:

$(':button').on('click', function () {
  $.ajax({
    // Your server script to process the upload
    url: 'upload.php',
    type: 'POST',

    // Form data
    data: new FormData($('form')[0]),

    // Tell jQuery not to process data or worry about content-type
    // You *must* include these options!
    cache: false,
    contentType: false,
    processData: false,

    // Custom XMLHttpRequest
    xhr: function () {
      var myXhr = $.ajaxSettings.xhr();
      if (myXhr.upload) {
        // For handling the progress of the upload
        myXhr.upload.addEventListener('progress', function (e) {
          if (e.lengthComputable) {
            $('progress').attr({
              value: e.loaded,
              max: e.total,
            });
          }
        }, false);
      }
      return myXhr;
    }
  });
});

As you can see, with HTML5 (and some research) file uploading not only becomes possible but super easy. Try it with Google Chrome as some of the HTML5 components of the examples aren't available in every browser.