Question

I am having a devil of a time trying to figure this out. I have a function that returns the value of another function. Within the second function I have a tertiary conditional and it will NOT get that return.. I can’t figure it out. I am sure it is a scope issue, but i can’t solve it. This is all within a jquery plugin.

 somefunctionA: function(){
   var self = this;
   var data = somecollection_of_data;
   var storeReturn = $.map( data, function( obj, i) {
                            return (function(i){
                                 return self._returnFilteredData(id);
                            })(obj.i);
             });
 },

  __returnFilteredData: function(i){
                var self = this;
                  if(some_conditionals){
                     return (
                       self.url ?
                       (function(){
                           if(some_more_conditionals){
                               self._getDBdata();  <<-- NEVER FIRES OFF
                           }
                      }) : self._getDBdata()  <<--- THIS ONE FIRES OFF
                     )
                  }
               }
            },

so what ends up happening is I get a “null” in the storeReturn array because in some conditionals that first tertiary fails. I cannot get into it… to test.

the “_getDBdata()” function just returns a hash based on some other data.

Any ideas on what is happening? I tried everything and I can’t solve this scope/closure issue.

Answer 1

First: this is horribly convoluted and you should stop doing it this way. Break it out into separate pieces.

Second: you’re never calling the anonymous function in that situation, you’re simply returning it. Adding another set of () will fix that, so that you call it and return its value:

__returnFilteredData: function(i){
              var self = this;
                if(some_conditionals){
                   return (
                     self.url ?
                     (function(){
                         if(some_more_conditionals){
                             return self._getDBdata();
                         }
                    })() : self._getDBdata()
                   )
                }
             }
          },