Maybe try using something like:
$.myplugin.fill.call( this, "red" );
On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 6:47 PM, Tim Molendijk <taw.molend...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Hey all,
>
> I've been developing jQuery plugins for quite some time now, and I
> like to think I got pretty good at it. One issue keeps nagging me
> though, and that is how to deal with private functions in a powerful
> yet elegant manner.
>
> My plugins generally look something like this:
>
> (function($) {
>
> $.fn.myplugin = function(...) {
> ...
> // some shared functionality, for example:
> this.css('background-color', 'green');
> ...
> };
> $.fn.mypluginAnotherPublicMethod = function(...) {
> ...
> // some shared functionality, for example:
> this.css('background-color', 'red');
> ...
> };
>
> }(jQuery);
>
> Now my question is: how to neatly DRY up that shared functionality? An
> obvious solution would be to put it in a function within the plugin's
> namespace:
>
> var fill = function($obj, color) {
> $obj.css('background-color', color);
> };
>
> Although this solution is effective and nicely namespaced, I really
> dislike it. For one simple reason: I have to pass it the jQuery
> object. I.e. I have to call it like this:
> fill(this, 'red');
> While I would like to call it like this:
> this.fill('red');
>
> Of course we could achieve this result by simply putting 'fill' into
> jQuery.fn. But that feels very uncomfortable. Imagine having ten
> plugins developed based on this approach and each plugin putting five
> of those 'private' functions into the jQuery function namespace. It
> ends up in a big mess. We could mitigate by prefixing each of these
> functions with the name of the plugin they belong to, but that doesn't
> really make it more attractive. These functions are supposed to be
> private to the plugin, so we do not want to expose them to the outside
> world at all (at least not directly).
>
> So there's my question: does anyone of you have suggestions for how to
> get the best of both worlds. So being able to call 'private' plugin
> function in a way similar to this.fill('red') (or this.myplugin.fill
> ('red') or even this.myplugin().fill('red') etc.), while preventing
> jQuery function namespace pollution. And of course it should be light-
> weight, as these private functions might be called very frequently.
>
> Thanks for your ideas.
>
> Regards,
> Tim Molendijk
>
