Passing Dynamic jQuery variable between same-page functions

Question

I've read several questions about using a variable in multiple functions by making it global (defining it outside of a funciton)... however, I have a function that produces a dynamic value on click (gets an href value of a link) -

I need to pass that resulting variable into another function.

Basically, I'm grabbing a clicked link's href value and then wanting to pass it to Ajax if a confirmation box is selected.

It doesn't seem that declaring the variable globally would work, as it's definition comes only if an onclick event is triggered.

Any thoughts?

Answer 1

You can create the variable as a global with a value of null, and then set it in your first function. After you read the variable in your second function, set the value back to null.

Example:

var someGlobal = null;

function f1( ) {
    someGlobal = 'someValue';
}

function f2( ) {
    if( someGlobal == null ) {
        // the global isn't set! might want a message of some sort, or just ignore it
        return;
    }
    var myLocal = someGlobal;
    someGlobal = null;

    // do something with myLocal here
}

Answer 2

Best way to achieve this is define the variable as you've read through outside sources outside of anything that is function(){}. What I usually do for my global variables for example is either set a default value or set it to a blank value above any of the other code I write in that JS.

Example:

var myHREFval;
$('a').click(function(){myHREFval = $(this).attr('href');});