Question

I am trying to create a simple text accordion which calculates each panel’s height and return this value as a variable. I can get values with if statements like if ( i === 0 ) { $(this).height(); } but can’t get this variable to the outside.I can do this without using variable but it became useless in long term.

Brıefly: I want to calculate each element’s height and use this variable inside click function.

Here is jsFiddle which includes the problem.

var panel = $('.holder div');
var trigger = $('a');

panel.each(function(i) {
    //problem starts when i try to calculate each ele's height
    var eachEleHeight = i.height();

    trigger.click(function() {
        $(this).prev('div').animate({'height':eachEleHeight+'px'},500);

        //this works widthout var eachEleHeight but became useless
        //$(this).prev('div').animate({'height':'300px'},500);
    });

    //this is for hiding text at doc.ready
    panel.css('height','56px');
});​

Answer 1

If I well understood, try this :

panel.each(function(i, el) {

    // create a reference to te current panel
    var $el = $(el);    

    // execute a function immediately, passing both the panel and its height
    (function(p, h) {
        // the trigger is targeted as the next link after the current panel
        p.next('a').click(function() {
           p.animate({ height : h + 'px'},500);
        });
    }($el, $el.height()));

    // set each panel height 
    $el.css('height','56px');
});

Example fiddle : http://jsfiddle.net/Aw39W/55/