Question

If I’m stuck with Prototype instead of jQuery, yet I like the chain-ability of jQuery, is there some downside to bringing that functionality for the CSS selector via the following?

function r(f) {  
  return function() {
    var args = [];    
    for(var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
        args.push(arguments[i]);
    }   
    this.each(function(e) {
      if (e && (typeof e[f] == 'function' || typeof e[f] == 'object'))
         e[f].apply(e, args);
    });
    return this;
  }
}

function om(p1, p2) {
  for( prop in p1 ) {   
    if( p1.hasOwnProperty( prop ) ){         
      p2[prop] = r(prop);
    }
  }
}

om(Element.Methods, Array.prototype);

There are a couple of improvements/enhancements lurking. But is there something really wrong with the code or am I missing something completely?

As a result of using this piece of code, now I can do the following…

$$('.something').html('blah').show();

An example: http://jsbin.com/olojo5/10/edit

Answer 1

The standard way to do “chaining” in Prototype.js is to explicitly iterate on the array of elements returned by a selector using “each”. For example:

$$(".something").each(function(e){e.update("foo").show();});

That being said, I see nothing wrong with your code, as long as it fits your coding style!