jQuery checkbox checked state changed event

Question

I want an event to fire client side when a checkbox is checked / unchecked:

$('.checkbox').click(function() {
  if ($(this).is(':checked')) {
    // Do stuff
  }
});

Basically I want it to happen for every checkbox on the page. Is this method of firing on the click and checking the state ok?

I'm thinking there must be a cleaner jQuery way. Anyone know a solution?

Answer 1

Bind to the change event instead of click. However, you will probably still need to check whether or not the checkbox is checked:

$(".checkbox").change(function() {
    if(this.checked) {
        //Do stuff
    }
});

The main benefit of binding to the change event over the click event is that not all clicks on a checkbox will cause it to change state. If you only want to capture events that cause the checkbox to change state, you want the aptly-named change event. Redacted in comments

Also note that I've used this.checked instead of wrapping the element in a jQuery object and using jQuery methods, simply because it's shorter and faster to access the property of the DOM element directly.

Edit (see comments)

To get all checkboxes you have a couple of options. You can use the :checkbox pseudo-selector:

$(":checkbox")

Or you could use an attribute equals selector:

$("input[type='checkbox']")