Prevent input event from firing when changing textarea programmatically

Question

I have a textarea that can be edited by the user. I occasionally update the text programmatically by changing the element's value property. I need an event that triggers when the user changes the text, but not when the program changes it. Is this possible?

Answer 1

use keyup as the event trigger which will allow the user activity to trigger the function but not if you do it programmatically

addEvent(document.getElementById('textArea_id'), 'keyup', function(event) {
//function goes here
});