Question

I am creating a fairly complex object and want to be able to manipulate the object from the outside. I want to reference an privileged method from a click event

function myObject(){
   //How do I reference this function?
   this.doSomething = function (action){
        var doing = action;
   }

}

I understand that I could reference the method if I create the object inside a variable like:

var obj = new myObject();
obj.doSomething('hit keyboard');

But the links I am creating to trigger this event are being created by the object, but placed outside the object, so they will not know the container variable to reference it.

i.e.

<a href="#" onclick="doSomething()">Do Something</a>

doesn’t work because of course the doSomething method is part of the object, not a global function. I could rewrite the code to make it global, but would rather avoid doing that.

If this question doesn’t make sense I would be happy to make it clearer. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Although it will sit in the global scope, and generally not recommended, you could do this (if you just need to get it working):

function myObject(){
   //How do I reference this function?
   window.doSomething = function (action){ // USE window instead of this !!
        var doing = action;
   }

}

By using window instead of this, it can be called in your handler.