Question

I’ve worked a bit with jquery tools and I’ve started browsing through the twitter bootstrap src.

One thing I’ve noticed is the use of the $.Event constructor for triggering events.

In many cases, (for instance the bootstrap modal) you find events triggered like so:

var e = $.Event('show');

this.$element.trigger(e);

It eludes me as to why this is better than just directly calling:

this.$element.trigger('show');

so I’m interested to know what the advantages are to using the jQuery Event constructor. I’ve read in the docs that you can attach arbitrary properties to the event, and that makes total sense to me. What I don’t understand however is why it might be advantageous to use the constructor if you’re not adding any properties to the event at all.

Can someone explain to me why the $.Event constructor is an advantage over calling trigger with the event string?

Many thanks

Answer 1

After taking a look at the bootstrap source, I believe you must be referring to this:

var that = this
    , e = $.Event('show')

this.$element.trigger(e)

if (this.isShown || e.isDefaultPrevented()) return

He’s defining e so that he can later check to see if the default action has been prevented with e.isDefaultPrevented().