I've been writing JS (mainly jQuery) for quite a few months now, but today I decided to make my first abstraction as a jQuery method. I already have working code but I feel/know that I'm not doing it the right way, so I come here for some enlightenment.
Note: Please do not reply that there's already something out there that does the trick as I already know that. My interest in this matter
is rather educational.
What my code
is intended to do (and does):
Limit the characters of a textfield and change the color of the counter when the user
is approaching the end.
And here's what I have:
$(function(){
$('#bio textarea').keyup(function(){
$(this).char_length_validation({
maxlength: 500,
warning: 50,
validationSelector: '#bio .note'
})
})
$('#bio textarea').trigger('keyup');
})
jQuery.fn.char_length_validation = function(opts){
chars_left = opts.maxlength - this.val().length;
if(chars_left >= 0){
$(opts.validationSelector + ' .value').text(chars_left);
if(chars_left < opts.warning){
$(opts.validationSelector).addClass('invalid');
}
else{
$(opts.validationSelector).removeClass('invalid');
}
}
else{
this.value = this.value.substring(0, opts.maxlength);
}
}
In the HTML:
<div id="bio">
<textarea>Some text</textarea>
<p class="note>
<span class="value">XX</span>
<span> characters left</span>
</p>
</div>
Particularly I feel really uncomfortable binding the event each on each keyup instead of binding once and calling a method later.
Also, (and hence the title) I need to call the method initially (when the page renders) and then every time the user inputs a character.
Thanks in advance for your time :)
