Fire jQuery event on div change

Question

I have a div whose content may change in various ways: for instance its whole content may be reloaded via innerHTML, or nodes may be added via DOM methods. This in turn may happen via native javascript or indirectly via calls the jQuery API or via other libraries.

I want to execute some code when the content of the div changes, but I have absolutely no control on how it will change. Indeed I am designing a widget that may be used by other people, who are free to change the content of their divs the way they prefer. When the inner content of this div changes, the shape of the widget may have to be updated as well.

I'm using jQuery. Is there a way to capture the event that the content of this div has changed, however it happened?

Answer 1

You can use DOMNodeInserted and DOMNodeRemoved to check if elements are added or removed. Unfortunately, IE doesn't support this.

$('#myDiv').bind('DOMNodeInserted DOMNodeRemoved', function(event) {
    if (event.type == 'DOMNodeInserted') {
        alert('Content added! Current content:' + '\n\n' + this.innerHTML);
    } else {
        alert('Content removed! Current content:' + '\n\n' + this.innerHTML);
    }
});

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Update

You could save the initial contents and future changes with .data(). Here's an example.

var div_eTypes = [],
    div_changes = [];
$(function() {
    $('#myDiv').each(function() {
        this['data-initialContents'] = this.innerHTML;
    }).bind('DOMNodeInserted DOMNodeRemoved', function(event) {
        div_eTypes.concat(e.type.match(/insert|remove/));
        div_changes.concat(this.innerHTML);
    });
});

Example output:

> $('#myDiv').data('initialContents');
"<h1>Hello, world!</h1><p>This is an example.</p>"
> div_eTypes;
["insert", "insert", "remove"]
> div_changes;
["<iframe src='http://example.com'></iframe>", "<h4>IANA — Example domains</h4><iframe src='http://example.com'></iframe>", "<h4>IANA – Example domains</h4>"]

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Update 2

You may want to include DOMSubtreeModified as well, because I've found out that DOMNodeInserted and DOMNodeRemoved don't trigger if an element's innerHTML is replaced directly. It still doesn't work in IE, but at least it works fine in other browsers.