Question

Currently I’m working on a project using RaphealJS library and everything seems to be alright until I encountered a problem like this.

Instead of doing this multiple times :

   dolphinIcon[1].click(function() {              
           this.attr({  
             stroke: 'black', 'stroke-width': 2,  
             fill: 'green'  
           }); 
           alert(1);
   });

   dolphinIcon[2].click(function() {              
           this.attr({  
             stroke: 'black', 'stroke-width': 2,  
             fill: 'green'  
           }); 
           alert(2);
   });

  dolphinIcon[3].click(function() {              
           this.attr({  
             stroke: 'black', 'stroke-width': 2,  
             fill: 'green'  
           }); 
           alert(3);
   });

Why can’t I just do this ?

for(var i=0; i<dolphinIcon.length; i++){
     dolphinIcon[i].click(function() {              
        this.attr({  
           stroke: 'black', 'stroke-width': 2,  
           fill: 'green'  
        });      
        alert(i);
     });
}

I just want each icon which is stored in the array to alert() the number of its index, but when I use for-loop, it always alert() the same number(size of the array) no matter which icon I clicked on. How should I fix this ?

Answer 1

This is a classic JavaScript problem. The variable i in each callback function is the same one, which will be dolphinIcon.length once the loop is done.

You need to use a closure to “capture” the i variable.

var clickFunc = function(i){
    return function(){
        this.attr({  
           stroke: 'black', 'stroke-width': 2,  
           fill: 'green'  
        });      
        alert(i);
    }
};
for(var i=0; i<dolphinIcon.length; i++){
     dolphinIcon[i].click(clickFunc(i));
}

clickFunc will return a function that “closes” on the value of i.

You can also pass extra data to the click handler, to be used once it’s called.

for(var i=0; i<dolphinIcon.length; i++){
     dolphinIcon[i].click({i: i}, function(e) {              
        this.attr({  
           stroke: 'black', 'stroke-width': 2,  
           fill: 'green'  
        });      
        alert(e.data.i);
     });
}