What do { and } mean inside params?

Question

Take the example:

$.ajax({lhs:val});

What does the {} do? As far as I know, there's no named parameters -- so is this an actual member (same as $.ajax.lhs)? What does it mean and what does it do?

Answer 1

That is object literal notation. It is creating an object with a lhs property, set to val.

It is another way to do the following

var obj = new Object();
obj.lhs = val;
$.ajax(obj);

In jQuery, many functions take an options object, which is just a plain object with various properties set to determine how the function acts.

Answer 2

It's a literal for an object.

var anObject = { member1: "Apple",
                 member2: function() { alert("Hello"); } };

alert(anObject.member1);      // Apple
anObject.member2();           // Hello