I do occasionally look at the source code, but I'm still new enough to
JavaScript that sometimes (even with 12 years of Java under my belt,
and a whole slew of other languages going back some 40 years) that
when I'm faced with new js constructs for the first time, about all I
can do is stare glassy-eyed and go "Huh?" And that's pretty well my
reaction to the snippet you posted below: "Huh?" :-) Would you be up
for walking through it verbally, explaining what it's doing?
In any event, not to worry: I'm learning fast, and I'm intrigued. This
is a much more interesting language than I had previously thought.
Howard
On Sep 30, 9:44 pm, "Michael Geary" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Glad you like the [].join('') trick, Howard - and good catch on the
> unnecessary wrapper. You didn't miss anything, and that
> simplifies the example down to:
>
> $('#exampleCA').append( [
> '<table style="width:718px;border:2px inset #336699">',
> '<tr class="exampleRow">',
> '<td style="text-align:center;color:white;">',
> 'I was created by jQuery append',
> '</td>',
> '</tr>',
> '</table>'
> ].join('') );
>
> One other thing I like about this approach is that - unlike the +
> concatenation operator - the comma operator has lower precedence
> than the ? : conditional operator and the || and && logical operators. So you
> can write code like this:
>
> var html = [
> '<div>',
> name ? name : 'no name',
> '</div>'
> ].join('');
>
> You could do that with string concatenation, but it would require parenthesis
> around the conditional expression, which adds a bit of
> ugliness.
>
> You're right on the appendTo vs. append question too - the docs need to be
> updated. Check the source code:
>
> jQuery.each({
> appendTo: "append",
> prependTo: "prepend",
> insertBefore: "before",
> insertAfter: "after",
> replaceAll: "replaceWith"
> }, function(i,n){
> jQuery.fn[ i ] = function(){
> var a = arguments;
> return this.each(function(){
> for ( var j = 0, al = a.length; j < al; j++ )
> jQuery(a[j])[n]( this );
> });
> };
> });
>
> appendTo is just a wrapper around append - just like prependTo, etc. And all
> of these functions run their arguments through
> domManip(), which is the code that handles the text vs. DOM element question.
>
> I wouldn't assume that any jQuery function that takes a string will also take
> DOM elements or jQuery objects, but for this group of
> functions it's certainly true.
>
> -Mike
>
> > From: howardk
>
> > Nice use of join()! I'm new to JavaScript and jQuery both,
> > and it's nice to come across little snippets like this I can
> > readily add to my jQuery repetoire and that slightly expand
> > my understanding of JavaScript.
>
> > By the way, the docs show that it's legal to pass, as an
> > argument to append(), either a jQuery object (as you're
> > doing), a DOM element, or a string. So you really don't need
> > to wrap the stringified array in a jQuery object before you
> > pass it in. Unless there's another reason for doing so that
> > I'm missing.
>
> > Apropos to the above, I wonder why the docs for appendTo()
> > show a string as being the only legal argument type? I tried
> > a test passing in a jQuery object instead and it worked just
> > fine. Does that mean you can use a jQuery object *any* time a
> > string is called for in other jQuery methods as well? Or just
> > a case of the documentation needing to be adjusted in this one case?
