Question

I want to store a pointer to a function and then call it later with some arguments, but I’m having trouble with how to pass the arguments to the function.

For example:

var MyObject = (function () {
    return {
        myMethod: function (a, b) {
            return a + b;
        }
    };
}());

var method = MyObject.myMethod;
var args = [2, 5];

method(args);

So in the last line, which I know doesn’t do what I want method(args), I want to essentially call MyObject.myMethod(2, 5), so my array attempt fails and creating an object also fails. How do I pass in the stored arguments to the stored method?

Answer 1

you can use apply which accepts an array of arguments as an argument

var myarray = [2,5,...] //your array of arguments

method.apply(this,myarray);  //execute your method

and in the method you have, you can receive the arguments via the “hidden” “pseudo-array” arguments argument.

function method(){
   var args = arguments; //is [2,5,...]
}

this has advantage over call since you can pre-build the argument array and don’t have to enumerate the arguments in the call’s ()