Question

I have defined a class named MyClass and I have defined two methods myMethod1 and myMethod2 for it:

function MyClass() {}
MyClass.prototype.myMethod1 = function() {...};
MyClass.prototype.myMethod2 = function() {...};

Inside myMethod1, I use jQuery and there’s a callback closure defined there:

MyClass.prototype.myMethod2 = function() {
 $.jQuery({success: function(data) {
  this.myMethod2();
 }, ...});
}

Now the problem is that this no longer is referring to MyClass. The question is how can I refer to it? At the moment I have assigned it to a variable named thisObj and access it this way:

MyClass.prototype.myMethod2 = function() {
 var thisObj = this;
 $.jQuery({success: function(data) {
  thisObj.myMethod2();
 }, ...});
}

Is there a better way to access MyClass.this from the closure nested in myMethod2?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The method you’ve used is often called the “that reference”, because the name that is commonly used as a name for the copy of the this reference. See Crockford’s talks on JavaScript for example.