Question

I’ve been playing with jQuery lately and I need now a function for strings, and I want to execute it like this:

var str = "mystring";
if( str.myPlugin( ) )
{

}

But all the examples I found for jquery plugins can only be used like $(selector).myPlugin();If I apply them to a string i get “… is not a function”.

How can I do this?

Answer 1

When you create a string, what you are really creating is a new instance of the String object.

var str = new String("mystring");

You can add methods to all instances of the object using the object’s prototype.

String.prototype.myPlugin = function(){
  alert("worky!");
}

var str = "mystring";
str.myPlugin();

Adding new methods to native objects such as the String object is usually frowned upon due to possible name conflicts.

Edit: just to add clarification.

This is not a method of jQuery and jQuery is not required to create these kinds of methods.