jQuery-style function calls with callback parameters & parameter expansion defaults

Disclaimers:

  1. I’m still learning my way with jQuery.
  2. Code here is pseudocode carved from functioning code (and even then only partly so), so it’s untested in real world.

I was curious as to how jQuery does parameter expansion in event handlers with callbacks. Googling I could only come up with resources that would call their custom functions with parameters given as object literals, like so:

myFunc({
  parameter1 : 12345,
  parameter2 : "foo"
});

, which, when using a callback parameter, would go something like:

myFunc({
  parameter1 : 12345,
  callback : function() {
    return true;
  }
});

Now, there’s nothing wrong with that as such. What I wanted however, was to be able to call my custom functions in the elegant way jQuery does it, without the object literal brackets surrounding the parameters, like so:

myFunc(12345, function() {
    return true;
});

Here’s how I could achieve this:

jQuery.fn.myFunc = function() {
	var options = {
		parameter1 : (arguments[0] || 0),
		callback : (arguments[1] || function() { return false; })
	}

	do_stuff_with_param1(options.parameter1);
        return options.callback();
}

One Reply to “jQuery-style function calls with callback parameters & parameter expansion defaults”

  1. P.S.: I first tried delving into jQuery source code to find out how exactly the real gurus do it, but found it soon easier to conjure up something myself.

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