event to tell when user typed their own value vs selecting a suggestion

Is there a way to get an event when the user “selects” the text that they have typed out, which is separate from the offered suggestions? I.e. user has typed ‘apple’, with provided suggestion ‘applesauce’; however user really wants to submit simply ‘apple’.

Originally I tried using the ‘change’ event for this:

    }).on('typeahead:selected', function($e, datum) {  // suggestion selected
          console.log('selected: ' + datum['url']);
          window.location = datum['url'];
    }).on('change', function(e) {                     // user typed their own value
          value = $('input.search-input').val();
          window.location = '/search_path?search=' + encodeURIComponent(value);
    });

but unfortunately ‘change’ also seems to fire when the user selects from the drop-down, so if the user types ‘apple’ and then clicks ‘applesauce’ there’s a kind of race condition where sometimes the form submits ‘apple’ and sometimes ‘applesauce’, depending on the speed of the remote.

[rprieto]

I needed that event too, to display a warning when the user types a “custom” value. It feels pretty hacky looking into “private” data, but here’s my temporary solution:

$('#my-item').on('change', function() {
  var $input = $(this);
  var available = $input.data('ttView').datasets[0].itemHash;
  var datum = _.findWhere(available, {value: $(this).val()});
  if (datum) {
    $input.trigger('typeahead:selected', datum);
  } else {
    $input.trigger('typeahead:uservalue', $(this).val());
  }
});

which I then listen to as:

$('#my-item').on('typeahead:selected',  function(e, datum) { console.log('existing: ' + datum.value); });
$('#my-item').on('typeahead:uservalue', function(e, value) { console.log('new: ' + value); });

This works both when the users selects an existing item, or manually types it out.

[invious]

@rprieto $input.data('ttView') is undefined, how do i define datum now?