contenteditable change events

Question

I want to run a function when a user edits the content of a div with contenteditable attribute. What's the equivalent of an onchange event?

I'm using jQuery so any solutions that uses jQuery is preferred. Thanks!

Answer 1

Check this idea out. http://pastie.org/1096892

I think it's close. HTML 5 really needs to add the change event to the spec. The only problem is that the callback function evaluates if (before == $(this).html()) before the content is actually updated in $(this).html(). setTimeout don't work, and it's sad. Let me know what you think.

Answer 2

Here's what worked for me:

   var clicked = {} 
   $("[contenteditable='true']").each(function(){       
        var id = $(this).attr("id");
        $(this).bind('focus', function() {
            // store the original value of element first time it gets focus
            if(!(id in clicked)){
                clicked[id] = $(this).html()
            }
        });
   });

   // then once the user clicks on save
   $("#save").click(function(){
            for(var id in clicked){
                var original = clicked[id];
                var current = $("#"+id).html();
                // check if value changed
                if(original != current) save(id,current);
            }
   });

Answer 3

To avoid timers and "save" buttons, you may use blur event wich fires when the element loses focus. but to be sure that the element was actually changed (not just focused and defocused), its content should be compared against its last version. or use keydown event to set some "dirty" flag on this element.

Answer 4

I'd suggest attaching listeners to key events fired by the editable element, though you need to be aware that keydown and keypress events are fired before the content itself is changed. This won't cover every possible means of changing the content: the user can also use cut, copy and paste from the Edit or context browser menus, so you may want to handle the cut copy and paste events too. Also, the user can drop text or other content, so there are more events there (mouseup, for example). You may want to poll the element's contents as a fallback.

UPDATE 29 October 2014

The HTML5 input event is the answer in the long term. At the time of writing, it is supported for contenteditable elements in current Mozilla (from Firefox 14) and WebKit/Blink browsers, but not IE.

Demo:

document.getElementById("editor").addEventListener("input", function() {
    console.log("input event fired");
}, false);

<div contenteditable="true" id="editor">Please type something in here</div>

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/ch6yn/2691/

Answer 5

The onchange event doesn't fires when an element with the contentEditable attribute is changed, a suggested approach could be to add a button, to "save" the edition.

Check this plugin which handles the issue in that way:

• Creating a quick and dirty jQuery contentEditable Plugin

Answer 6

I built a jQuery plugin to do this.

(function ($) {
    $.fn.wysiwygEvt = function () {
        return this.each(function () {
            var $this = $(this);
            var htmlold = $this.html();
            $this.bind('blur keyup paste copy cut mouseup', function () {
                var htmlnew = $this.html();
                if (htmlold !== htmlnew) {
                    $this.trigger('change')
                }
            })
        })
    }
})(jQuery);

You can simply call $('.wysiwyg').wysiwygEvt();

You can also remove / add events if you wish