Question

I’m looking to combine some code but I’m not sure if what I want to do is possible. Basically I have a function with a bunch of if/else statements, and there is one line that is similar throughout all the different cases:

$('#selector).prev('.class-selector').addClass('current');
$('#selector).next('.class-selector').addClass('current');
$('#selector).last('.class-selector').addClass('current');
$('#selector).first('.class-selector').addClass('current');

Are there any ways I can set the filter method (prev, next, last, first) as a variable so I don’t have to repeat this line all over my function? I tried passing a parameter to the function and using a variable as the method:

$('#selector).variable('.class-selector').addClass('current');

but that doesn’t work. I get:

object has no method ‘variable'” error.

I vaguely understand why this doesn’t work, based on how jQuery code is read. Is there another way to do this?

Answer 1

This is not much shorter, but it’s definitely more condensed 🙂

for (var i = 0, fns = ['prev', 'next', 'last', 'first'], fn; fn = fns[i]; ++i) {
    $('#selector')[fn]('.class-selector').addClass('current');
}