jQuery Grid Plugin - jqGrid

The stated goal of Tony and the team is to maintain backward compatibility when adding features.  This is normal and good practice.

In version 3.8, a "feature" was added to allow clicking on a selected row in NON-multiselect mode which would deselect that row.  This is directly contrary to the prior feature that clicking on a selected row keeps it selected.  The prior behavior is NOT a bug.

By changing this behavior you break backward compatibility.  This new mode should require a flag to enable it.

Example-   deselectWhenReselect: true;

The new feature is the one that should require the flag, since the old behavior did not require one and requiring a flag for the old behavior, also breaks backward compatibility.

I was using the prior behavior.  When the user clicks a row, A) it highlights so the user has a visual indicator of which row they selected.  Then, using OnSelectedRow, I open an overlay with information, much like a lightbox.  When the user is done, they close the overlay, revealing the grid, once again, with the row they selected still highlighted, as a visual reference.  All this happens automatically.  However, information changes and the user may wish to select the same row again to open the overlay once more.

Before, in version 3.7, this worked.  Now, the row deselects and the user gets nothing.  They have to click a second time to get their overlay.  For my project, this is bad human interface design, and frankly, annoying to the user.  There is no way for me to override this behavior without actually changing the source code.

I can go back to version 3.7, but I upgraded to 3.8 because I wanted to start using the grouping function.  So, now, I am faced with one of two options.

1) I can go back to version 3.7 and try to get by without any of the new features.

2) I can upgrade, but make custom changes to the code to get back the functionality I need.  I have to remember and make these custom change from now on, everytime I upgrade, which, is definitely not good practice for code maintenance.

It is important to keep existing features in place and not disable them when adding new features.

The 3.7.2 code: from grid.base.js  Lines 2347-2349

$t.p.selrow = pt.id;
$(pt).addClass("ui-state-highlight").attr("aria-selected","true");
if( $t.p.onSelectRow && onsr) { $t.p.onSelectRow.call($t,$t.p.selrow, true); }

New faulty 3.8.2 code from grid.base.js  Lines 2419-2423

if( $t.p.selrow != pt.id) {
    $t.p.selrow = pt.id;
    $(pt).addClass("ui-state-highlight").attr("aria-selected","true");
    if( $t.p.onSelectRow && onsr) { $t.p.onSelectRow.call($t,$t.p.selrow, true); }
} else {$t.p.selrow = null;}

The corrected code follows (this is untested):

if( $t.p.selrow != pt.id || !$t.p.deselectWhenReselect) {
    $t.p.selrow = pt.id;
    $(pt).addClass("ui-state-highlight").attr("aria-selected","true");
    if( $t.p.onSelectRow && onsr) { $t.p.onSelectRow.call($t,$t.p.selrow, true); }
} else {$t.p.selrow = null;}

Add the following after line 633 (the line with multiselect: false,)

deselectWhenReselect: false,