Question

I am using the following function closure in a jqgrid (a jquery grid) to retain changes in edits when paging in a variable called ‘retainedChanges’- does this look ok; Im i breaking any good practices in javascript;
the code works alright just want to make sure I dont introduce features that can break in the future

 (function($){
      var retainedChanges;
      retainedChanges = new Array();
      $.retainChangesOnPaging = function(){
        var changedCells = $('#grid').jqGrid('getChangedCells');
        // loop over changedCells array, removing duplicates if you want to...
          return  retainedChanges.push(/* this is inside the loop; push current value to array*/);
         ....
      }
       $.getRetainedChanges = function(){
         return retainedChanges;
       }
    })(jQuery);

Answer 1

This works fine, although you should probably accept jQuery as an argument:

(function($){

This way, even if the $ symbol is being used for something else outside of your closure, it won’t effect your code inside the closure.

2 more things:

1) You should declare and assign you variable together, and use [] instead of new Array().
2) You’re missing a $ symbol here: ('#grid').

---

For a full rundown, look at this:

(function($){

  var retainedChanges = [];

  $.retainChangesOnPaging = function(){
    var changedCells = $('#grid').jqGrid('getChangedCells');
    // loop over changedCells array, removing duplicates if you want to...
    return  retainedChanges.push(/* this is inside the loop; push current value to array*/);
    ....
  }

  $.getRetainedChanges = function(){
    return retainedChanges;
  }

})(jQuery);