$('input').attr('value') gives current (not default) value with jQuery 1.8.1

Question

$(#email).attr('value') should give the original default value of an input, but with jQuery 1.8.1, gives the current value. Why is this? When was this change made? What steps should I take so I can be aware of these changes and not stumble upon them after finding things don't work as expected. Thank you

http://jsfiddle.net/ufrHD/2/ using jQuery 1.8.1

http://jsfiddle.net/ufrHD/3/ using jQuery 1.9.1

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> 
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> 
    <head> 
        <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1" /> 
        <title>Input</title> 
        <script src="http://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.8.1.js" type="text/javascript"></script> 
        <script type="text/javascript">
            $(function() {
                $("#click").click(function() {alert("$('#email').val()="+$('#email').val()+"\n$('#email').attr('value')="+$('#email').attr('value'));});
            });
        </script>
    </head>

    <body>
        <button id="click">Click</button>
        <input type="email" name="name" id="email" value="email@example.com" />
    </body> 
</html>

I don't understand why you'd ever use `.attr('value')` in the first place, or why you'd expect it to give you the `defaultValue`? — billyonecan, May 07 '13 at 13:41
As John Resig says, "Neither .attr() nor .prop() should be used for getting/setting value. Use the .val() method instead (although using .attr(“value”, “somevalue”) will continue to work, as it did before 1.6)." — j08691, May 07 '13 at 13:41
@billyonecan. I am trying to get the original default value. How else can this be done? — user1032531, May 07 '13 at 13:42
@Alnitak. Yes, will do so, but now many of my other plugins are not working. — user1032531, May 07 '13 at 13:44
@billyonecan. http://jsfiddle.net/ufrHD/6/. Yes, I think you are correct. Is prop, and not attr the "correct" way to do this? How/when did it change? — user1032531, May 07 '13 at 13:47
@user1032531 there's nothing obvious in the 1.9 release notes. — Alnitak, May 07 '13 at 13:49

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered May 07 '13 at 13:54

The change was made in 1.9 as documented in http://jquery.com/upgrade-guide/1.9/#attr-versus-prop- as well as some blog posts. The old pre-1.9 behavior was a bug.

The best way to be aware of the changes is to read the blog posts and api.jquery.com documentation. If you see docs issues that need clarification file an issue or pull request at https://github.com/jquery/api.jquery.com/ .

MMM · Answer 2 · 2013-05-07T14:00:14.040

2

It isn't obvious that $.attr('value') should return the default value. As a rule of thumb, if something doesn't seem obvious, your mileage might vary.

Therefore you should not be using this to get the default value. Instead, ~~store the default value within the elements for future retrieval:~~

$(function () {
    $("[value]").each(function () {
        $(this).attr("data-def-value", $(this).val());
    });
);

Then you can get it using:

$(element).attr("data-def-value");

EDIT: As billyonecan pointed out you can access the elements defaultValue

edited May 07 '13 at 14:00

answered May 07 '13 at 13:54

MMM

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Ah, of course. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/DOM/HTMLInputElement#Properties – MMM May 07 '13 at 13:59

$('input').attr('value') gives current (not default) value with jQuery 1.8.1

2 Answers2