I'm looking for a way, with jQuery, to get the default value of an input field (in an HTML field).

Seems simple enough. Just calling $("#id-of-field").attr('value') should return the value I'm wanting right?

Thing is, if the value is Foo, when I load the page, it returns Foo. No problem there. But if I write Bar in the field, then reload (not submit) the page, $("#id-of-field").attr('value') will return me Bar, even if in the source code, the value attribute of the field is still Foo.

That makes validation of my form sticky, because when I get my default values to ignore them if the field has not been filled, I could get a real value in the mix of "Values to be ignored".

FYI, I can't put in the values manually, since the form is dynamic, and cannot query directly the database because it's a Wordpress Website.

I'm looking for a way, with jQuery, to get the default value of an input field (in an HTML field).

Seems simple enough. Just calling $("#id-of-field").attr('value') should return the value I'm wanting right?

Thing is, if the value is Foo, when I load the page, it returns Foo. No problem there. But if I write Bar in the field, then reload (not submit) the page, $("#id-of-field").attr('value') will return me Bar, even if in the source code, the value attribute of the field is still Foo.

That makes validation of my form sticky, because when I get my default values to ignore them if the field has not been filled, I could get a real value in the mix of "Values to be ignored".

FYI, I can't put in the values manually, since the form is dynamic, and cannot query directly the database because it's a Wordpress Website.

• javascript
• jquery
• html
• forms
• wordpress

3 Answers 3

Input fields have the defaultValue DOM property that does exactly what you need.

According to this answer, the jQuery (> 1.6.3) way to access it is

$('#element').prop('defaultValue')

Alternatively, in pure JavaScript, e.g. -

document.getElementById("element").defaultValue

Try this

$('inputSelector').prop('defaultValue');

You could try -

$("#id-of-field")[0].defaultValue

That should get the DOM defaultValue property which should give you the original value of the textbox

https://developer.mozilla/en/XUL/textbox#p-defaultValue