Comments on: Breaking Prototype habits in a jQuery world

By: Brian Dillard

Brian Dillard — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 18:56:23 +0000

@rimmer333: I don't think that works. I'm using 1.2.3 and hover needs 2 arguments: one function each for the mouseover and mouseout states.

@jdalton: Totally agreed with your analysis. I think both libraries offer pretty similar functionality but differ in the way they trade off elegance and power.

By: jdalton

jdalton — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 15:41:30 +0000

I believe jQuery can avoid the use of “each” because its selector method, $(),
returns an instance of the jQuery object that has the mentioned method, "click",
and others attached.

In Prototype the selector method, $$(), returns an array.
You can then use the 'invoke' method to call a method of each of its items.

$$('a.offsite, a.offsiteWide').invoke('observe', 'click', function(){
var width = this.hasClassName('offsiteWide') ? 1050 : 800;
.....

At first glance this may seem unnecessarily verbose but the real power comes in
not being limited to the methods attached to the array (or the jQuery object).

For example on an array of strings I can call ‘truncate’:
arrStrings = arrStrings.invoke('truncate', 10);

Or on an array of dev defined objects:
var calculations = arrCalcs.invoke(‘doComplexCalculations’, arg1, arg2);

It's chainable as well:
$$('#windows div.close').invoke('addClassName', 'active').invoke('show');

Your “take-home” can be applied to Prototype as well.
Great article, just though I should clarify some of the prototype info. :)

-JDD

By: rimmer333

rimmer333 — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:47:42 +0000

as of jQuery 1.2 you can rewrite the last part of the last example this way:

.hover(
function() {
$(this).toggleClass('hover');
}
);

All of your other examples still have a lot to polish.