Question

I’m having difficulty with calling a public method from within my plugin itself. I’m not sure what the issue is. What am I doing wrong?

(function($) {

    var MyPlugin = function(){

        /* PUBLIC */
        this.publicFunction = function() {
            // Do public things
        };

        /* PRIVATE */
        var privateFunction = function() {
            // Do private things

            // Call this one public function
            publicFunction(); // WANT THIS but doesn't work
        }
    };

    $.fn.myPlugin = function() {

        var myPlugin = new MyPlugin(options);

        // Binding click to public function
        $("a").bind('click', function(e){
            e.preventDefault();
            myPlugin.publicFunction($(this)); // AND WANT THIS but does
        });

        return myPlugin;
    };
})(jQuery);

Answer 1

You just need to be able to reference the this object of MyPlugin from within the function itself without losing scope. To do so assign it to a variable (name doesn’t matter, typical convention is self)

var MyPlugin = function(){
    var self = this;
    ...
    var privatefunction = function () {
        self.publicFunction();
    }
...