Drupal 6 JavaScript and jQuery - Ebook-Cours.com

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Chapter 9
That's all there is to this anonymous function executed by the $().each() function.
There's only one more thing our plug-in function does:
(function ($) {
jQuery.fn.divWrap = function () {
var attrs = (arguments.length > 0) ? arguments[0] : {};
this.each(function (index, item) {
var div = $(item).wrap('').parent();
if (attrs) {
div.attr(attrs);
}
});
return this;
}
})(jQuery);
Notice the highlighted line in the code? Why do we return this? We are returning
the jQuery object so that other functions can be chained off to this one. We could, for
example, do something like this:
$('a').divWrap().text();
This would return the text of each element after wrapping all of the
elements inside of the div tags.
So that's the basic method for creating a jQuery plug-in. How do you make use of
this tool inside of Drupal? This is done the same way you would use any JavaScript
library. In a theme, you might add it to the .info file using a scripts[] directive.
Or in PHP (such as a module), you can add it with the drupal_add_js() function.
Other references for writing jQuery plug-ins
There are two very helpful jQuery basic plug-in writing tutorials
that may be helpful. The official plug-in writing guide is at http://
docs.jquery.com/Plug-ins/Authoring. The standard plug-in
writing pattern is explained here: http://www.learningjquery.
com/2007/10/a-plug-in-development-pattern.
When should you write a jQuery plug-in instead of JavaScript in Drupal? To
a large extent, the answer will depend on your own needs. However, here are
some guidelines:
•
If you might need to use the code outside of Drupal, a plug-in is easier
to port. In fact, you may want to release a generic plug-in to the jQuery
community at http://jquery.com.
This material is copyright and is licensed for the sole use by Richard Ostheimer on 18th June 2009
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