Writing a Javascript library that is code-completion and code-inspection friendly
- by Vivin Paliath
I recently made my own Javascript library and I initially used the following pattern:
var myLibrary = (function () {
var someProp = "...";
function someFunc() {
...
}
function someFunc2() {
...
}
return {
func: someFunc,
fun2: someFunc2,
prop: someProp;
}
}());
The problem with this is that I can't really use code completion because the IDE doesn't know about the properties that the function literal is returning (I'm using IntelliJ IDEA 9 by the way).
I've looked at jQuery code and tried to do this:
(function(window, undefined) {
var myLibrary = (function () {
var someProp = "...";
function someFunc() {
...
}
function someFunc2() {
...
}
return {
func: someFunc,
fun2: someFunc2,
prop: someProp;
}
}());
window.myLibrary = myLibrary;
}(window));
I tried this, but now I have a different problem. The IDE doesn't really pick up on myLibrary either.
The way I'm solving the problem now is this way:
var myLibrary = {
func: function() { },
func2: function() { },
prop: ""
};
myLibrary = (function () {
var someProp = "...";
function someFunc() {
...
}
function someFunc2() {
...
}
return {
func: someFunc,
fun2: someFunc2,
prop: someProp;
}
}());
But that seems kinda clunky, and I can't exactly figure out how jQuery is doing it. Another question I have is how to handle functions with arbitrary numbers of parameters.
For example, jQuery.bind can take 2 or 3 parameters, and the IDE doesn't seem to complain. I tried to do the same thing with my library, where a function could take 0 arguments or 1 argument. However, the IDE complains and warns that the correct number of parameters aren't being sent in. How do I handle this?
