Using JQuery, how do you detect if the value of a text input has changed while the field still has focus?

Question

I noticed prior to posting this question that there have been similar questions posted on this topic before, however the user isn\'t interacting with the text field by using

Answer 1

You can just listen for the keypress event.

<input type="text" id="target" value="" />

var target = $('#target'),
    val = target.val();

function monitor()
{
    var current_val = $(this).val();
    if (current_val != val) {
        console.log('changed from', val, 'to', current_val);
        val = current_val;
    }
}

target.keypress(monitor);

Answer 2

Well, there's always brute force: poll it with a setInterval().