How can I get class-based objects in JavaScript with jQuery?

Question

I'm trying to move from Prototype to jQuery and there's one last thing I can't figure out how to do in the new library.

Here's what I used to do with Prototype:

MyClass = Class.create();

MyClass.prototype = {
  initialize: function(options) {
  }
}

Then I could create a new MyClass with:

var mc = new MyClass({});

Does jQuery have anything like Prototype's Class.create()? And if not, how do I get the same kind of thing without a library?

Answer 1

I use the jquery extend function to extend a class prototype.

For example:

MyWidget = function(name_var) {
  this.init(name_var);
}

$.extend(MyWidget.prototype, {
   // object variables
   widget_name: '',

   init: function(widget_name) {
     // do initialization here
     this.widget_name = widget_name;
   },

   doSomething: function() {
     // an example object method
     alert('my name is '+this.widget_name);
   }
});

// example of using the class built above
var widget1 = new MyWidget('widget one');
widget1.doSomething();

Note: I asked a related question about this same topic.

Answer 2

jQuery uses the standard javascript functionality for creating new classes.

There are some fine examples on the web, but I would recommend looking at David Flanagan's books Javascript: The Definitive Guide.

Object-Oriented JavaScript

JavaScript and Object Oriented Programming (OOP)

---

I apologize, I completely misunderstood your original post. I'm guessing that you actually want to know how to extend the jQuery $ object. This is easily doable, there are a large number of plugins out there for doing so. There is a tutorial on the jQuery site for doing this: Getting Started With jQuery

Essentially, though, you use

 jQuery.fn.foobar = function() {
   // do something
 };