Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery - Ebook-Cours.com

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Chapter 8
Right now, we have the buttons defined in $buttons. Should these be added to the
Drupal.settings object or sent as a script fragment? Technically speaking, either
one can be done.
Adding things to the Drupal.settings array has the advantage of being easier to
code (by a few characters). Modules, such as JavaScript Theming, make liberal use of
Drupal.settings. But this is not actually a good idea most of the time.
Earlier in the book, we talked about namespaces. The chief rationale for namespacing
applies even here. If we just add our settings to Drupal.settings, we may
eventually encounter problems where other JavaScript files which use settings with
the same name. This will lead to conflicts as two different libraries will try to store
their data in the same place. The Drupal API docs (http://api.drupal.org/api/
function/drupal_add_js/6) have this to say on the matter:
You might want to wrap your actual configuration settings in another variable to
prevent the pollution of the Drupal.settings namespace.
Is the suggestion that we ought to wrap settings in another variable and then use
Drupal.settings (creating something like Drupal.settings.BetterEditor.
buttons), or that we should use an altogether different variable?
The first option is not good. Frankly, repartitioning a namespace like this is silly.
We've now created another namespace inside of a namespace, and for what purpose?
In addition to this, calling the function is even more difficult. That's because we have
to add another layer of testing to our array. Our array would look more like this:
$buttons = array(
'BetterEditor' => array(
'buttons' => array(
array(
'name' => 'B',
'tag' => 'strong',
// ...
),
array(
'name' => 'I',
// ...
),
// and more buttons....
),
);
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Richard Ostheimer on 18th June 2009
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