Question

I have some code from someone but wondering why they might have used a function like this.

    this.viewable= 45;

    getGroups: function() {

        return Math.ceil( this.getList().length / this.viewable );
    }

Why would they divide the list length by a number viewable.
The result is the amount of items that should be rendered on the screen.
Why not just say 45 be the number. Is it meant to be a percentage of the list. Usually I will divide a large value by a smaller value to get the percentage.

Sorry if this seems like a stupid math question but my Math skills are crap 🙂 And just trying to understand and learn some simple Math skills.

Answer 1

It’s returning the number of groups (pages) that are required to display the list. The reason it’s declared as a variable (vs. using the constant in the formula) is so that it can be modified easily in one place. And likely this is part of a plugin for which the view length can be modified from outside, so this declaration provides a handle to it, with 45 being the default.