Question

I’m not a JavaScript guru (yet). I am trying to figure out a way to cut down the number of lines below…are there any shortcuts for lets say the if statements?

function showDialog(divID) 
{
    var dialogDiv = $("#" + divID);

    var height = 500;
    var width = 400;
    var resizable = false;

    if (dialogDiv.attr("height") != "") 
    {
        height = parseInt(dialogDiv.attr("minHeight"));
    }

    if (dialogDiv.attr("width") != "") 
    {
        width = parseInt(dialogDiv.attr("minWidth"));
    }

    if (dialogDiv.attr("resizable") != "") 
    {
        resizable = dialogDiv.attr("resizable");
    }

    dialogDiv.dialog
    (
        {
            resizable: resizable,
            width: width,
            height: height,
            bgiframe: true,
            modal: true,
            autoOpen: false,
            show: 'blind'
        }
    )

    dialogDiv.dialog("open");
}

Answer 1

You can shorten it down a bit, like this:

function showDialog(divID) 
{
    var dialogDiv = $("#" + divID);

    dialogDiv.dialog({
            resizable: dialogDiv.attr('resizable'),
            width: dialogDiv.attr('width') || 400,
            height: dialogDiv.attr('height') || 500,
            bgiframe: true,
            modal: true,
            autoOpen: false,
            show: 'blind'
    });
    dialogDiv.dialog("open");
}

This takes advantage of the fact javascript is weakly typed, actually it kind of abuses the hell out of it, but it works.

I still find this pretty readable, but I’m used to the syntax, if you’re not…decide what’s readable vs what’s terse and which is more important to you, there’s certainly a tradeoff in many cases.