Change event on select with knockout binding, how can I know if it is a real change?

Question

I am building a permissions UI, I have a list of permissions with a select list next to each permission. The permissions are represented by an observable array of objects which

Answer 1

I use this custom binding (based on this fiddle by RP Niemeyer, see his answer to this question), which makes sure the numeric value is properly converted from string to number (as suggested by the solution of Michael Best):

Javascript:

ko.bindingHandlers.valueAsNumber = {
    init: function (element, valueAccessor, allBindingsAccessor) {
        var observable = valueAccessor(),
            interceptor = ko.computed({
                read: function () {
                    var val = ko.utils.unwrapObservable(observable);
                    return (observable() ? observable().toString() : observable());
                },
                write: function (newValue) {
                    observable(newValue ? parseInt(newValue, 10) : newValue);
                },
                owner: this
            });
        ko.applyBindingsToNode(element, { value: interceptor });
    }
};

Example HTML:

    
    R
    RW