I'm looking at a jQuery plugin, which has a single function. After setting up the appropriate defaults though a constructor argument the function defines a couple of helper functions, and then as the last part returns a call to this.each(), like so:
return this.each(function() {
//long method defined here
});
I understand the use of this.each() in modifying matching DOM elements and such, but what does the return statement accomplish? Some sort of array of modified DOM elements, which can then be chained in other calls?
I've read about this.each on this site but I can't quite figure what the return
does here. Thanks for helping clear this up.
.each
returns the elements it was called on, so in this case, it is probably to maintain the ability of methods to be chained on that selector. That means that if the plugin'S method is called foo
, you should be able to do
$("mySelector").foo().show();
Because foo
returned the result of .each
which is basically $("mySelector").
Hope that made sense.
It allows for one to call a plugin or an event on a bunch of elements and then apply that same function or event to all of them
So if you do:
$('.selector').myPlugin();
And if, let us say, .selector
contains 10 elements, all 10 elements would get whatever myPlugin
does.
The reason for returning that .each
statement is because .each()
returns whatever it was given and it allows you to chain multiple functions and plugins together on one jQuery element.
For example:
$('.selector').myPlugin().yourPlugin();
It makes functions chainable
http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Authoring#Maintaining_Chainability
this make it possible to keep objects chain, so you can call jquery methods like this:
$("selector").css().mouseover().etc().blahblah();
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