is it possible to maintain chainability in a jQuery plugin and also return true or false

Question

I wrote a beginner jQuery plugin which validate a form.

this jQuery Plugin show an Error under the validating element if it left blank or if it can't pass my regular expression test.

now I want to return true or false from my plugin to disable submit button if the form has an Error.

The question is : Can I do this and also maintain Chainability of my plugin?

I have something like this:

$("input[type='text']").change(this.mytextboxvalidator(
{'regex':'something','message':'somethingelse'}));

Answer 1

When you maintain chainabilty, you return a jQuery-object. It's an object, so just add a property to this object where you store the boolean:

(function( $ ){

  $.fn.someMethod = function(  ) {  

    var bln=true;
    return (this.each(function() {
      //modify boolean when needed
      bln=false;
    }).extend({myBoolean:bln}));

  };
})( jQuery );

Usage:

if(!$('someselector').someMethod().myBoolean)
 {
  //disable the button 
 }