Develop Reference

Javascript * is not a function (prototype function)

Coming from a C++ background, trying to work with an OO language that doesn't have explicit typing is a little more than a headache.
So I have dynamic elements for a webpage that are "controlled" by objects since there are tons of stuff I need to manage on each for it to work. The element is just the visual output of the data inside of the object itself, that's all I really need it for.
Except that I need the object to perform an internal function when it's clicked. That seems to be the biggest source of my headache thus far.
Javascript:
function onClick(file) //The external onClick function I use to try to get it to call from.
{
file.state = INUSE;
file.checkState();
}
function fileObject () { //The file object itself
this.element;
this.newElement();
//initialize stuff for the object
}
fileObject.prototype.newElement = function() { //creates a new element and sets its event listener
this.element.click(function() {onClick(this)});
}
fileObject.prototype.checkState = function() {/*does stuff*/} //apparently this is "not a function"
The error I get exactly is "file.checkState is not a function" from Firefox's console panel.
I'm still new to javascript, but after doing some debugging, I've come to find out that it's explicitly the onClick(this) function that is causing all of the errors. When used with something else, the onClick function works perfectly, but for some reason, the this keyword doesn't appear to actually be sending the reference to the fileObject since all checks show file being undefined when inside of the onClick scope.
Is there something fundamentally wrong about the way I'm trying to do this or am I just missing a step (or adding something that I don't need) that will help get this snippet working.

So you know, your initial problem isn't actually handling the action, but listening to it. click will trigger a synthetic click event, rather than liste for one.
You want ... .element.addEventListener("click", callback); that said, you face a second problem, immediately thereafter.
I will leave my example code as you've written it to not confuse the matter...
But when you see click( ) know that I mean subscribing with addEventListener, if element really does mean a browser DOM element. If it's not a standard browser element, and your own API, then ignore the previous portion, and carry on.
this is dynamically bound at the invocation time of the function (not at definition time).
The nearest function, scoped above, is your callback function that you are passing into .click( ... ).
Which is entirely different than the this which you mean outside of the callback.
Whatever is on the left-hand side of the dot is the this context for the duration of that particular invocation.
Needless to say, click() doesn't know enough to bind the this you mean, to the left-hand side of your callback.
The solution (or one of many) is to use lexical scoping and/or closure to retain the value of the object you mean.
// easy but messier
var fileObject = this;
... .click(function () { onClick(fileObject); });
// Cleaner with thunks:
function clickHandler (onClick, obj) {
return function () { onClick(obj); };
}
... .click(clickHandler(this));

Coming from c++ the way Javascript handles this will seem a little crazy, it looks like here you need to tell the function you've defined what this is - like so:
this.element.click(function() {onClick(this)}.bind(this));

JavaScript function returns undefined except when debugging

When trying this simple code:
function create_folder(name, parent_ID) {
var BM_folder = "";
chrome.bookmarks.create({title : name, parent_id : parent_ID }, function (new_folder) {
BM_folder = new_folder;
});
console.log("create folder in id : " + BM_folder.id);
return BM_folder.id;
}
I get undefined as output, but when I debug it works fine and I get the real bookmark ID. I have similar problems in more functions, I guess it's the same problem.
EDIT #1: fixed the vars, my real function has full strings, I simply can't post that way.
EDIT #2: thanks Marco Bonelli, is there a way to turn this into sync, so that I'll be able to use normal oop?

There are several problems in your code:
First of all, that function cannot work... you're using a hypen (-), and variable/function names cannot contain hypens in JavaScript, so change it in something else, maybe create_folder or createFolder. That's the same for your variable BM-folder, and parent-ID. Call them BMFolder and parentID.
Secondly, you are creating the object to pass to chrome.bookmarks.create() in the wrong way: parent-ID is both wrong and undefined. You should do: chrome.bookmarks.create({title: name, parentID: parentid}).
Inside your function, you're calling the chrome.bookmarks.create() method, which is asynchronous: this means that the code is processed separately from the body of your function, and when the method has finished working, it will call the callback function, which you provide as second argument. Basically when calling chrome.bookmarks.create() you have to wait until it's finished to continue, because if you try to access the BMfolder.id variable before the callback gets called it will obviously be undefined.
Now, to summarize what I said above, I'll show the right code for to achieve you're trying to:
function createFolder(name, parentid) {
chrome.bookmarks.create({title: name, parentID: parentid }, function (newFolder) {
console.log("Created the folder with ID: " + newFolder.id);
goOn(newFolder);
});
}
function goOn(BMFolder) {
console.log('Here is the folder: ', BMFolder);
// do something...
}
You cannot use return BMFolder.id, because your function is asynchronous, so the only thing you can do to know that the bookmark folder has been created is to call another function to continue. For example, you can name it goOn().
EDIT:
Is there a way to turn this into sync, so that I'll be able to use normal oop?
Unfortunately you cannot turn an asynchronous function into a synchronous one. Chrome extensions' methods are only asynchronous, therefore you have to work on that. By the way, working asynchronously is much more efficient than working synchronously, and you should get used to this programming style, because (as said before) Chrome extensions only work asynchronously, and so do many other JS frameworks and APIs.

Deferred timing issue

I have the following code I've designed to load and run script at runtime. You'll note that I save it to localStorage if it isn't already there. Now it runs fine if it's stored there already, but when it's just got the text from the file it throws ReferenceError: loginLaunch is not defined, though the text seems to have been loaded (hence the console.log lines that check the length). For your convenience I've included a line, localStorage.clear();, to make it alternate between the error message that's the problem and ReferenceError: loginLaunch is not defined, which given the code below is the desired result.
I don't understand why it should work one way and not the other. If it's a timing issue I don't see how the use of the promise, loginCode, lets it through unless possibly appendChild() is asynchronous, but I'm under the impression that it isn't (mainly because it has no callback, and I tried to find out, but could not) and even then why would code before the appendChild() have an impact?
Have I messed up one of the promises? I include the contents of the file login.js at the end. I searched SO for anything relevant but without any luck except for just one post that states that appendChild is synchronous.
Please help.
var loginCode = runCode("login_1001","./js/login.js");
loginCode.done(loginLaunch());
//FUNCTIONS START HERE
function getCode(local, source) { //This creates the promise to get the code (not to run it)
console.log("start of loadCode");
dfd = $.Deferred(); //This is the one to return.
script = localStorage.getItem(local); //Try to load from local storage.
// console.log("script after local attempt: "+script);
if (script) { //If found...
console.log("found Local code");
dfd.resolve(script);
localStorage.clear(); //Added for debugging
} else { //load from file.
ajax = $.ajax({
url : source,
cache : false,
dataType : "text", //load as text initially so that we can store it locally.
});
ajax.done(function(fromFile){
localStorage.setItem(local, fromFile); //store it locally.
//console.log("script after ajax attempt: "+script);
dfd.resolve(fromFile);
});
ajax.fail(function(){
dfd.reject("Error retrieving code. You may be disconnected");
});
}
return dfd.promise();
}
function runCode(local, source) {
dfd = $.Deferred(); //This is the one to return.
code = getCode(local, source); //local promise
code.done(function(retrievedCode){
console.log(retrievedCode.length);
var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0]; //first head section
var el = document.createElement("script"); //named the same as the local storage
//script.type= 'text/javascript'; Redundant — it's the default
// el.id = local; //Probably redundant, but if we want to manipulate it later...
el.text = retrievedCode;
head.appendChild(el); //This shouldn't run anything, just make global functions that will be called later.
console.log(el.text.length);
dfd.resolve(); //If we need to return the node to manipulate it later we'd make the variable above and 'return' it here
});
return dfd.promise();
}
Here's the contents of the login.js file.
function loginLaunch(){
dfd = $.Deferred(); //This is the one to return.
loadElement("login.1001", "#content", "login.html");
//After the element has been loaded we have a disconnect — i.e. there's no promise waiting, so we have to wait for the user.
}
$("#content").delegate('#loginButton','click',function(){
console.log("Login click");
//php to pick up the entered details and pass them to common php that also uses the
checkCredentials = $.ajax({
type : "POST",
url : "./php/credentials.php",
data : {
queryString : queryString
},
datatype : "text", // 1 or 0
});
checkCredentials.done(credentialsChecked(success));
// MOVE THIS STUFF
readyPublicList();
$.when(publicListCode,loggedIn).then(runDefaultPublicList()); //Assumes successful login so it loads the code for the list window in parallel.
//Note that it's probable that my approach to the login window may change, because it needs to be available on the fly too.
// $("#content").html("<p>test</p>"); //Successfully tested, well it was once.
});
function loginHide(){
$("#loginHtml").hide;
}

I'm not sure why this works:
var loginCode = runCode("login_1001","./js/login.js");
loginCode.done(function(){loginLaunch();});
and this doesn't:
var loginCode = runCode("login_1001","./js/login.js");
loginCode.done(loginLaunch);
My one thought is that maybe if you pass literal named functions to .done then they are validated when loginCode is created, while anonymous functions aren't validated until they are about to be run.
I should note that the error was appearing before the console.log output.
Maybe someone with a better grasp of the technicalities can clarify. For now I'm just happy to stop tearing my hair out, but I like to know how things work...

You need to change at least three things. First change this:
loginCode.done(loginLaunch());
to this:
loginCode.done(function() {loginLaunch()});
You need to be passing a function reference to the .done() handler so it can be called later. The way you had it, you were calling it immediately BEFORE loginCode() was done with its work, thus it was getting called too early.
In addition, loginLaunch doesn't exist yet so you can't pass a reference directly to it. Instead, you can pass a reference to a wrapper function that then calls loginLaunch() only after it finally exists.
And second, you need to declare your local variables with var so they aren't implicit globals and stomp on each other. For example, you have multiple functions who call each other trying to use the same global dfd. That is a recipe for disaster. Put var in front of it to make it a local variable so it's unique to that scope.
And third, el.text doesn't look like the right property to me for your script. Perhaps you meant to use .textContent or since you have jQuery, you can do:
$(el).text(retrievedCode);
In a couple style-related issue, ALL local variables should be declared with var before them so they are not implicit globals. This will bite you hard by causing mysterious, hard to track down bugs, even more so with async code.
And, you can generally use the promise returned by jQuery from ajax functions rather than creating your own.
To incorporate those improvements:
runCode("login_1001","./js/login.js").done(loginLaunch);
function getCode(local, source) { //This creates the promise to get the code (not to run it)
var script = localStorage.getItem(local); //Try to load from local storage.
if (script) { //If found...
localStorage.clear(); //Added for debugging
// return a resolved promise (since there's no async here)
return $.Deferred().resolve(script);
} else { //load from file.
// return the ajax promise
return $.ajax({
url : source,
cache : false,
dataType : "text", //load as text initially so that we can store it locally.
}).then(function(fromFile){
localStorage.setItem(local, fromFile); //store it locally.
return fromFile;
});
}
}
function runCode(local, source) {
return getCode(local, source).then(function(retrievedCode){
console.log(retrievedCode.length);
var head = document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0]; //first head section
var el = document.createElement("script"); //named the same as the local storage
$(el).text(retrievedCode);
head.appendChild(el); //This shouldn't run anything, just make global functions that will be called later.
console.log(el.text.length);
});
}
FYI, if you just want to insert a script file, you don't have to manually retrieve the script with ajax yourself. You can use the src property on a script tag and let the browser do the loading for you. You can see a couple ways to do that here and here.

How to use JSONP with Object Oriented Javascript

I am new to JSONP and had implemented cross domain functionality for my application and everything is working fine. Now i want to change my javascript code to apply object orientation.
My api is
http://localhost:8080/myApplication/getComments?callback=displayComments
CrossDomain.prototype.displayComments = function(data) {
// code to display the comments
}
Now I am getting an error in firebug given below
ReferenceError: displayComments is not defined
I changed the api to
http://localhost:8080/myApplication/getComments?callback=this.displayComments
and found that the function is appended inline to the callback like this
http://localhost:8080/myApplication/getComments?callback=callback=function (jsonData)
{
//code to display the comments
}
this time another error in firebug
SyntaxError: function statement requires a name
I have a doubt whether to use JSONP in object oriented javascript or not.
Please help.
Thanks in advance.

There's no point in defining the function on the prototype of a function unless you are going to create instances of that function, so start by doing that.
var myCrossDomain = new CrossDomain();
Then you have to call the method on the object, not as a global (it isn't a global, so you can't do that anyway)
var uri = "http://localhost:8080/myApplication/getComments?callback=" +
encodeURIComponent("myCrossDomain.displayComments");
In response to edits and comments:
Yes i am creating an instance of this in another js file
Then reference it as shown above.
I changed the api to
http://localhost:8080/myApplication/getComments?callback=this.displayComments
It's JSON-P. It runs by adding a new script element. Everything gets called in the global context. That is going to call this.displayComments which will be the same as window.displayComments.
If you want to call your method directly, then you need to specify the global variable holding the instance explicitly.
If you don't want to call it directly then you can use the more traditional approach of generating a new, anonymous function which has access to said object through a closure, assigning that function to a global variable (with a unique name) and using that name as your callback argument.
and found that the function is appended inline to the callback like this
http://localhost:8080/myApplication/getComments?callback=callback=function (jsonData)
You haven't shown us the code that creates the URI so we can't tell why that might be the case.

javascript - how to call a function newly added from ajax

I have a coding difficulty which have been asked in this forum before:
Calling a JavaScript function returned from an Ajax response
But I didn't find the answers quite satisfying. To be more precise of the problem I'm dealing, here is the detail:
I dynamically load a document (HTML and javascript) using jquery
var url = 'document.php';
$('#container').load(url);
Example of what the document.php looks like:
<form>
<input name="firstname"></input>
</form>
<script>
function dosomething()
{
console.log($('input[name=firstname]').val());
}
</script>
*The dosomething() function is the one I'd like to call later
And then I want to call the functions from that document.php. Due to my requirement, I don't want to call the function after the documents' loaded, but rather to call it later when I need it. Because it was dynamically loaded, the DOM doesn't recognize the functions. How to properly call this function?
Thank you

the DOM doesn't recognize the functions
This sounds like your other functions are wrapped in $(document).ready() in the remote page. If that is the case they are out of scope for you to call them from code in the main page and you need to move them out of the ready handler to make them globally accessible.
EDIT: Other possibilities
Script tags in head- move to body after html, or use $.getScript in ajax callback to retrieve

I think that you're trying to implement the technique called on-demand javascript (or lazy-loading). In other words, your page should initially load just a small script - but use a bunch of objects and functions, which are available in some other files, but will be loaded when they're required.
If that's the case, I have to warn you: you'll probably need to update your existing code. Instead of just calling some function right as it is, in all gun-blazing glory, you should check for its existence first - and if it's not available, wait for its loading:
if (typeof lazyObjects.someLazyFunction !== 'function') {
lazyLoad('lazyFunction.js');
}
lazyObjects.someLazyFunction();
The key point here is that lazyLoad should be synchronous. In other words, you'll have to wait until the script containing your function is actually loaded. Otherwise someLazyFunction just won't be defined when it's called, even with this sort of checks.
lazyFunction.js, in turn, will contain some code that will alter lazyObjects, adding to them the required method as a property:
// in lazyFunction.js
lazyObjects.someLazyFunction = function() { ... }
While it's technically possible to use global (=window) object for these cases, I usually don't do this - and won't recommend doing it either.
See, it's not that simple. ) I'd recommend reading this article to find out more about this technique - and actually using some established components to implement it in your code (some of them are mentioned in the linked article).