Is there a better way to create an object-oriented class with jQuery?

Question

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(); 

Is there a better way to do this? Is there a cleaner way to create the class above with only one statement instead of two?

Answer 1

I quite like John Resig's Simple JavaScript Inheritance.

var MyWidget = Class.extend({   init: function(widget_name){     this.widget_name = widget_name;   },    doSomething: function() {     alert('my name is ' + this.widget_name);   } }); 

NB: The "Class" object demonstrated above isn't included in jQuery itself - it's a 25 line snippet from Mr. jQuery himself, provided in the article above.

Answer 2

Why not just use the simple OOP that JavaScript itself provides...long before jQuery?

var myClass = function(){}; myClass.prototype = {     some_property: null,     some_other_property: 0,      doSomething: function(msg) {         this.some_property = msg;         alert(this.some_property);     } }; 

Then you just create an instance of the class:

var myClassObject = new myClass(); myClassObject.doSomething("Hello Worlds"); 

Simple!