Question

I was reading this article http://www.klauskomenda.com/code/javascript-programming-patterns/#revealing and was wondering if I can pass parameters to override the private properties.

// revealing module pattern
var anchorChange4 = function () {

    // this will be a private property
    var config = {
        colors: [ "#F63", "#CC0", "#CFF" ]
    }

    // this will be a public method
    var init = function () {
        var self = this; // assign reference to current object to "self"

        // get all links on the page
        var anchors = document.getElementsByTagName("a");
        var size = anchors.length;

        for (var i = 0; i < size; i++) {
            anchors[i].color = config.colors[i];

            anchors[i].onclick = function () {
                self.changeColor(this, this.color); // this is bound to the anchor object
                return false;
            };
        }
    }

    // this will be a public method
    var changeColor = function (linkObj, newColor) {
        linkObj.style.backgroundColor = newColor;
    }

    return {
        // declare which properties and methods are supposed to be public
        init: init,
        changeColor: changeColor
    }
}();

anchorChange4.init();

I’m trying to change the values of the Array colors, like passing different colors as parameters. I hope I’m making some sense.

Answer 1

You can make init accept a configuration parameter and extend the private configuration with this one:

var init = function (options) {
    // copy properties of `options` to `config`. Will overwrite existing ones.
    for(var prop in options) {
        if(options.hasOwnProperty(prop)){
            config[prop] = options[prop];
        }
    }
    //...
}

Then you can pass an object to init:

anchorChange4.init({
    colors: ['#FFF', '#000']
});