Ignore multiple button taps after first one on iPhone webapp using jQuery Mobile? - iphone

Question

Assume button A in an HTML5 webapp built with jQuery Mobile.
If someone taps button A, we call foo(). Foo() should get called once even if the user double taps button A.
We tried using event.preventDefault(), but that didn't stop the second tap from invoking foo(). event.stopImmediatePropagation() might work, but it also stops other methods further up the stack and may not lead to clean code maintenance.
Other suggestions? Maintaining a tracking variable seems like an awfully ugly solution and is undesirable.

Answer 1

You can set a flag and check if it's OK to run the foo() function or unbind the event for the time you don't want the user to be able to use it and then re-bind the event handler after a delay (just a couple options).
Here's what I would do. I would use a timeout to exclude the subsequent events:
$(document).delegate('#my-page-id', 'pageinit', function () {
//setup a flag to determine if it's OK to run the event handler
var okFlag = true;
//bind event handler to the element in question for the `click` event
$('#my-button-id').bind('click', function () {
//check to see if the flag is set to `true`, do nothing if it's not
if (okFlag) {
//set the flag to `false` so the event handler will be disabled until the timeout resolves
okFlag = false;
//set a timeout to set the flag back to `true` which enables the event handler once again
//you can change the delay for the timeout to whatever you may need, note that units are in milliseconds
setTimeout(function () {
okFlag = true;
}, 300);
//and now, finally, run your original event handler
foo();
}
});
});

Answer 2

I've created a sample here http://jsfiddle.net/kiliman/kH924/
If you're using <a data-role="button"> type buttons, there is no 'disabled' status, but you can add the appropriate class to give it the disabled look.
In your event handler, check to see if the button has the ui-disabled class, and if so, you can return right away. If it doesn't, add the ui-disabled class, then call foo()
If you want to re-enable the button, simply remove the class.
$(function() {
$('#page').bind('pageinit', function(e, data) {
// initialize page
$('#dofoo').click(function() {
var $btn = $(this),
isDisabled = $btn.hasClass('ui-disabled');
if (isDisabled) {
e.preventDefault();
return;
}
$btn.addClass('ui-disabled');
foo();
});
});
function foo() {
alert('I did foo');
}
});