Consider looking through valHooks by element type first, then by nodeName instead of the other way around

[mathias]

jQuery#val contains this line of code: ​http://jsapi.info/jquery/1.7.1/val#L2317

hooks = jQuery.valHooks[ elem.nodeName.toLowerCase() ] || jQuery.valHooks[ elem.type ];

This is later repeated on line 2361: ​http://jsapi.info/jquery/1.7.1/val#L2361.

How about switching these around, making it:

hooks = jQuery.valHooks[ elem.type ] || jQuery.valHooks[ elem.nodeName.toLowerCase() ];

This would allow plugin authors to set e.g. jQuery.valHooks.input without affecting the valHooks for checkbox etc. Here’s a more detailed use case: ​https://github.com/mathiasbynens/jquery-placeholder/issues/52

Note that there’s only one item in jQuery.valHooks that’s based on the node name: jQuery.valHooks.select. All others are element types.

[mathias]

Related question: why is "value" (the string literal) used here instead of value (the variable name)? ​http://jsapi.info/jquery/git/val#L2372

if ( hooks && "get" in hooks && (ret = hooks.get( elem, "value" )) !== undefined ) {
  return ret;
}

[Timmy Willison]

I agree with this change.

As for your comment, the variable value would not be appropriate, but the string "value" doesn't need to be passed there either. It is there for convenience (a reference to the property name being retrieved), but is not used in any of the internal hooks. I think I did that right after writing attrHooks, which always passes the attribute name. We could remove it.

[mathias]

Replying to timmywil:

I agree with this change.

Glad to hear! (Also very happy that you set milestone to 1.7.2 — yay!)

As for your comment, the variable value would not be appropriate, but the string "value" doesn't need to be passed there either. It is there for convenience (a reference to the property name being retrieved), but is not used in any of the internal hooks. I think I did that right after writing attrHooks, which always passes the attribute name. We could remove it.

Oh, I see! The second argument confused me and made me think of set instead. I was just wondering :)

[mathias]

As discussed on IRC, it looks like jQuery.valHooks.button’s get and set take two and three arguments, respectively. For that reason it’s probably best to just leave the "value" stuff in there.

Pull request: ​https://github.com/jquery/jquery/pull/678

[dmethvin]

Should we consider this a breaking change? If so it should be deferred to 1.8. I honestly doubt there are a lot of external hooks but people are always surprising us.

[Timmy Willison]

I highly doubt it will cause a raucous, but I suppose since we're in beta, we should push to 1.8. Thanks Dave.

[Mathias Bynens]

Fix #11316. Find valHooks first by element type, then by nodeName.

Reverses the previous search order.

Changeset: 2803a5e6f2704691fdd8ce4d34fe961d0192a0fb