I am developing some JavaScript that should work with either Prototype.js or JQuery, thus I need some way to identify what is the primary library in use. How can I do that?
You can check for jQuery like this:
if (window.$ === window.jQuery)
Well, you could check for the presence of jQuery:
if(window.jQuery !== "undefined")
{
// jQuery Yay!
}
and then if it is assigned to $
if(window.jQuery === window.$)
{
// jQuery Yay!
}
Could jQuery noconflict help? Then you could use jQuery for jQuery and $ for prototype.
#SLaks and #Chacha102 are right for detecting jQuery, but if you want to make sure that if the $ function is not from jQuery, comes from PrototypeJS, you can:
​if (typeof $ == 'function'​​) {
if ($.fn && $.fn.jquery) { // $.fn.jquery contains the version number
// jquery
} else if (window.Prototype && Prototype.Version) {
// prototype
}
}​
I am developing some JavaScript that should work with either Prototype.js or JQuery, thus I need some way to identify what is the primary library in use. How can I do that?
Your question is ambiguous, there are two obvious meanings to me so I'll answer both.
If you mean you want write code that will work regardless of whether jQuery or Prototype.js has been used, the answer is that it is quite easy to write code that works regardless of the libraries that have been, or will be, loaded. So there is no need to discover which one has been used.
If you mean that you are going to write two separate scripts, one for jQuery and one for Prototype.js, then, depending on which one you "detect", you'll load one script or the other, then you basing your code on a very bad architecture. Neither of those libraries support a particularly wide selection of browsers and both need updating whenever a new version comes out, even of the "popular" ones they support.
Attempting to support both using separate scripts will create an on-going maintenance headache - times two. Or perhaps that is your intention.
--
Rob
Write it without dependency on any library and it should work fine with both jQuery and Prototype ;)
Seriously, isn't one of the main points of these library to avoid having to write three different variations of each line of code for each browser? Writing code to try to suit more than one library seems quite silly.
Anyway, looking at the documentation for either library for about 5 seconds should give you a hint as to what properties jq $ will have that pt $ will not. This suggests that you haven't really bothered to look at the differences between the frameworks (which is obviously going to be the best way to tell them apart, right?). Are you sure you know what you're getting yourself into?
As several have mentioned:
var whosThatDollarSign = typeof window.$=='undefined' ? 'none' : (window.$==window.jQuery ? 'jQuery' : 'not jQuery')
Related
I am pretty sure this must have been asked in another form, but searching for the $ sign does not yield any results here.
I have already made a big system, and used jQuery extensively, referencing it with the $. At this point, I don't want to go back.
My problem is that now I have implemented CKEditor, which also references itself with the $, like many other JavaScript frameworks. So now I get a conflict and lots of:
Uncaught TypeError: cannot get property 'any_function' of undefined
I don't want to go through the CKEditor code, searching and replacing, since I will be updating in the future. I also want to keep using $ for jQuery, but nothing else.
Off course I cannot simply use:
$.noConflict()
Without breaking my scripts.
Is there a way where I can keep using $ for jQuery whenever I want, while letting my JavaScript frameworks use $ internally?
What is my best/easiest solution here?
You can wrap either sets of your code in an IIFE and pass the relevant object to it.
(function($) {
// Code that uses jQuery
})(jQuery);
I'd also suggest assigning CKEditor to something else right after it's been loaded so that you can follow a similar pattern for CKEditor code.
// Right after loading CKEditor
var CKEditor = $;
// Code that uses CKEditor
(function($) {
...
})(CKEditor);
Although it'd be more sustainable to just reassign CKEditor to another variable and only use that variable.
I have been using jQuery for quite a few years now, and after I include the jQuery scripts in whatever site I am working on, I would always use the $ for jQuery objects. For example:
$('#my_selector').click(function(){...
I had built a website a few years ago in Joomla 1.6 with over 200 pages and jQuery used in almost all of them, all with the $. Now I am rebuilding the site in Joomla 3.3.0. The funny thing is, now sometimes the $ just doesn't work when identifying jQuery objects, but when I use jQuery it works. For example. the above code example would have to be changed to this:
jQuery('#my_selector').click(function(){...
And that works. And the final strangest thing is that on one page, it seems like the $ works for some of the jQuery but not all. The error that I see is this one:
TypeError: undefined is not a function
Seems like the problem occurs mostly on the functions that run after load complete circumstances. Anyway I am just wondering if people out there know why the $ would stop working with identifying the jQuery functions and objects.
Thanks!
You are most probably using a conflicting library, meaning: another script/library that declares (and thus overrides) the variable $. Wrap all your code in a closure, and you should be good:
(function($) {
$('#my_selector').doStuff();
})(jQuery)
Or, if it needs to be executed after document ready:
jQuery(document).ready(function($) {
$('#my_selector').doStuff();
});
Joomla 3.x is moving progressively to jQuery and replacing all MooTools dependencies along the way.
The default state is to load jQuery in noConflict() mode, but depending on features used on any given page by extensions (templates,plug-ins, components or modules) MooTools may also be loaded.
That means that on some pages, jQuery is defined and not $ and on other pages both are defined, obviously this will result in the issues you are seeing.
Add to that most third-party extensions from the 1.6 era (you have been upgrading to the 2.5.x line along the way right?) just ignored what-ever was going on and loaded whatever they needed (potentially blowing away other libraries) you generally will have to sort out all the conflicts first.
The only guaranteed way to use jQuery is by using the jQuery prefix.
You can read about using JavaScript frameworks with Joomla here, amongst other things it gives you future proof mechanism built-in to Joomla for loading jQuery.
To load jQuery, use: JHtml::_('jquery.framework');
To load the jQuery UI core call: JHtml::_('jquery.ui');
As has been mentioned you can wrap your JavaScript in a closure, in fact this is what the core com_banners does in /media/cbanner.js
var jQuery;
(function ($) {
$(document).ready(function () {
$('#jform_type').on('change', function (a, params) {
var v = typeof(params) !== 'object' ? $('#jform_type').val() : params.selected;
switch (v) {
case '0':
// Image
$('#image, #url').show();
$('#custom').hide();
break;
case '1':
// Custom
$('#image, #url').hide();
$('#custom').show();
break;
}
});
});
})(jQuery);
Are you or joomla using mootools or any other library with the $?
This would mean there is a conflict and the right way to solve it, is by using jQuery instead of $.
I am trying to decipher a .js script and I am finding it filled with $ throughout? Is there any reason to use this? I'm pretty new to JavaScript.
I think you are reading a JavaScript library famously known as jQuery (or possibly another library). The $ is just a short form for a namespace or use as an identifier.
You can think of it like this jQuery('p') to select all the paragraphs on a page,
or for short form you can just write $('p').
Here is a link for jQuery tutorials/docs jQuery
Here is a list of standards section 7.6 describes it in detail ECMA Standard
A number of libraries have used $ as their primary symbol. It's nothing to do with JavaScript per se, but it's a short distinctive symbol and so libraries have tended to glom onto it. (You can start an identifier with $ in JavaScript, and identifiers can be one character long, so $ is a valid identifier, just like a or x.)
I know of at least three libraries that use $ for something:
jQuery - It's the all purpose function for jQuery, an alias of the jQuery function; more here.
Prototype - It's Prototype's replacement for document.getElementById, more here. Prototype also has $$, which is for looking things up via CSS selectors.
MooTools - Same use as Prototype (because MooTools is either "inspired by" or "forked from" Prototype, some years back, depending on who you ask), more here. And like Prototype, it has $$.
$ is a variable. A number of frameworks use it as a short hand for using it. Prototype and Jquery are the two big ones. This does not mean that the $ automatically is either one of those. It could be anything as anything in JavaScript can assign something to the $. This is something to be aware of, because when you start combining scripts from different sources, it's really easy for one to accidentally reassign a variable to something else.
Most likely it is a framework reference, but you'll have to read the code to be sure. At one point in time the $ was meant to be used to indicate that the code referenced by it was auto generated, but this is just a guideline.
if you're new to javascript, $() can look strange.
Try to think of it like
var $ = function(){
//do something
}
So the dollar sign is just the name of a variable like any other.
var myFunction = function(){
//do something
}
// this is exactly the same just a different name.
So the dollar sign has no special meaning in javascript.
Frameworks like to use it because you are using their functions so often, having to write e.g. jQuery() every time would be tedious. Having one character is nice and short.
I think they also have a preference for the $ symbol, purely because it is unusual so it is quickly distinguishable from other code.
A quick way to find out if it is jQuery is to do console.log(jQuery) if the console returns a string of code $() is jQuery. If you get undefined, it is something else.
Maybe you're reading jQuery code.
Because JavaScript lets you define variables which start with $ sign, or literally which are only $. For example, you can do:
var $ = "something";
alert($);
jQuery is a library built on JavaScript (the most popular at the time) and it has a global object to keep everything encapsulated. You access that global object using $.
The script is probably using a third party library such as Prototypejs or jQuery or he defined his own function $() which explain why the dollar sign appears so often in that script.
It's a jQuery function. That's what it is most probably. Might also be the Prototype library, or just a function that does something that's needed many times in the code, like getElementById etc
Without seeing the code, it sounds like the script you are looking at makes use of jQuery, as the $ is the default jQuery object.
Typically the $ will represent jQuery or another specific library (Moo Tools, etc.) . $ is the shortened form of referencing the jQuery object (or whatever library it was assigned). It makes the code much more readable and easy to use.
If you are just learning javascript, you will soon become very familiar with jQuery. :)
Either its jQuery or an old PHP habit by some javascript programmer :)
$ is only a function. It means you work with some javascript superstructure (framework).
I've tried some of the editors/IDEs regularly recommended for coding JavaScript (Aptana, WebStorm, ...) but none of them has a satisfying autocomplete functionality. I'm probably spoiled by Microsoft's IntelliSense for .NET. There is some JavaScript-IntelliSense in WebDeveloper, but that seems to be a stripped-down version. The best I've found so far is WebStorm, but its code completition is easily distracted by imported libraries (offering hundreds of suggestions) and identical function names.
Did I miss an editor/IDE that uses refactoring (or something else) to offer proper code completition, so that it really "knowns" what that variable-name stands for, I just put a dot behind? Or is something like this on its way?
I always recommend Komodo Edit from ActiveState (now up to version 6, with support for HTML 5 and CSS3 as well as recent versions of Javascript, PHP, etc.) Note that you may have to install addons for the languages you're working in, but you should find them through the Mozilla-like Addon manager.
Also supports jQuery and even lets you use jQuery (along with vanilla Javascript or Python) in its powerful macro IDE.
Code completion example:
<script type="application/x-javascript">
var obj = {};
obj.personnel = [{firstName:"John", lastName:"Brick", age:43},
{firstName:"Jane", lastName:"Motte", age:26}
];
// now type obj. and code completion immediately offers you "personnel"
// note: file must be saved for the app to find all members of declared
// variables, but I save about every 10 seconds so it's not a problem
</script>
The best I've found so far is
WebStorm, but its code completition is
easily distracted by imported
libraries (offering hundreds of
suggestions) and identical function
names.
This comment confuses me. If you import the libraries, and your code is using them, why is it bad to include the function names in the code completion suggestions? Wouldn't you want to have jQuery's functions included if you're using it?
If you're using Microsoft's IntelliSense with jQuery, does it stick to its guns and only show JavaScript core functions? Sounds limited to me, unable to be smart when I add libraries.
Or is something like this on it's [sic] way?
It sounds to me like you want a clairvoyant interface. I don't think it is on the way anytime soon.
By the way, "it's" == "it is"; "its" is the possessive.
I can proxy a single function in javascript by doing something like this (just jotted down from memory so bear with me)
function addAroundAdvice(target){
var targetFunction = target.aFunction;
target.aFunction = new function(){
invokePreCall();
targetFunction.apply(target, arguments);
invokePostCall();
}
}
Being a java programmer I'd think of this as a dynamic proxy. Every time I write code like this I think that someone must have made a really smart library that does the common proxying operations that is at least 10% better than what I can do in a hurry. I'd be expecting some stuff like correctly intercepting all methods for any given object, which may not be entirely trivial. Then there's different types of advice. So while I'm not expecting something the size of scriptaculous, it's certainly more than 6 lines of code.
So where are these libraries ?
Try jQuery AOP plugin
Looking at the source it seems that only uses jQuery as a namespace, so you could try this plugin even if don't want to use jQuery.
The Dojo Toolkit has a lot of support for AOP constructs like this:
Eugene Lazutkin's Blog Post on Aspect Oriented Programming with Dojo
The fact that you have been able to do it I would think means that there is a library to achieve it in the form of pure JavaScript i.e. your above example. Design Patterns can be applied to JavaScript as you know, so I think the advice I would provide to you is the following by a Google and Yahoo GUI developer :
http://jsdesignpatterns.com/
Chapter 14: The Proxy Pattern. Reference there solution to yours. You may still prefer your approach or you may find tips from their approach.
Cheers,
Andrew
I don't think you can intercept all functions.
The best you can do is iterate over all elements of an object and look for any functions:
for elem in someObject {
if typeof(elem) == "function" {
// replace the function
}
}
Trouble is, that if you add a function later it's not routed through the proxy.