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Use the val() method to retrieve data from an HTML form field.
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In the last video, we learned how
to use jQuery to get, insert, or
0:00
change plain text or HTML on a webpage.
0:03
But what if we wanna get and
do something with information from a user?
0:07
To build this blog previewer, we'll want a
user to be able to fill out this form and
0:10
when they click on this preview button,
0:15
display what was entered
over here on the right.
0:17
The HTML and text methods can't be used
to get information from form inputs
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such as text inputs and text areas.
0:25
So how would we get and
preview information from a user?
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We can do this with jQuery's val method.
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Let's go back to app.js.
0:35
Right now, we've got some baked
in values for the preview.
0:37
Let's comment out all this code for now.
0:40
So we want all the magic to happen
when this PREVIEW button is clicked.
0:45
So let's start by selecting the PREVIEW
button and adding an event listener to it.
0:49
If we look at the index.html file,
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we can see that there's a button
element with the ID of previewButton.
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Let's head back to app.js and
use jQuery to select that element.
1:05
Then we'll use the click method and
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pass in a function that will be called
when the user clicks on the button.
1:16
So remember, what we're saying here
is when the element with the ID of
1:29
previewButton is clicked,
do something here.
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Now let's see how the val method works.
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Everytime the preview button is pressed,
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let's log out the value of the blog
title field, which is this field here.
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If we look at index.html again,
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we can see that the title field
has an ID of blogTitleInput, so
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let's start by selecting that
inside of our click handler.
1:56
Then we'll call the val method on it and
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that will retrieve whatever
the user has typed into the field.
2:09
Then we can save it to the variable title.
2:15
Now let’s log out titles so
we can see what it gives us.
2:19
I’ll save, go to my browser, refresh,
and open up Chrome Dev Tools.
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Into the TITLE field,
I'll type This is my title.
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As you can see,
everytime the button is pressed,
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we'll return whatever has
been typed into this field.
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Great.
2:57
Now we can do the same thing
with the blog content field.
2:57
Use the value method to
grab the user's input.
3:01
This field, as we can see,
has an ID of blogContentInput.
3:04
So let's select that.
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Call the val method on it and
save it to a variable called content.
3:12
And let's delete this for now.
3:16
Now we can move these two lines
inside of our click function.
3:29
So what we're saying here is that when
this button is clicked, get what the user
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has typed into these two fields,
the TITLE field and the CONTENT field, and
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set that content to the blogTitlePreview
and blogContentPreview elements,
3:51
which are these elements right here
in our HTML, this h2 and this div.
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So let's save, go back to the page,
refresh, and I'll close this for now.
4:05
And type something into this fields to
see if we get the expected behavior.
4:12
Excellent, it's working,
we have a blog previewer.
4:26
Now we can copy and paste the code for the
flash message into the click handler so
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that the message only displays
when the button is clicked.
4:36
Now as you can see,
this doesn't quite work.
4:54
And that's because we need to
make sure that the message is
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only hidden on page load and
only displays when the button is clicked.
4:59
So let's select the message div and
hide it outside of the click handler.
5:05
And we can delete this and
save and refresh the preview.
5:24
And awesome.
5:41
Our simple blog previewer and
our first jQuery program are complete.
5:43
Congratulations.
5:48
You've just built your
first jQuery project.
5:49
In the next part of the course,
we'll learn much more about jQuery events.
5:53
We'll also learn about more
complex jQuery selectors,
5:57
quite a few more jQuery methods and
build a fun spoiler revealing application.
6:00
I'll see you there.
6:05
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