Question

Just wondering what the best practice is for something like this; I have this function: which determines a few variable changes

states = function(){
    if($('#Animation.switch.switchOff').length == 1){
        animationtoggle = 0;
    }
    else{
        animationtoggle = 1;
    }
    if($('#Autoscroll.switch.switchOff').length == 1){
        scrolltoggle = 1;
    }
    else{
        scrolltoggle = 0;
    }
}

And i now have another JS file, where i need to check against those variables, do i just literally run the states() inside any other function? so that it re checks every time?

Answer 1

Local variables can be used for this purpose. Try something like this:

var states = function(){
    // set default values
    var animationtoggle = 0
        scrolltoggle  = 0;
    if($('#Animation.switch.switchOff').length != 1){
       animationtoggle = 1;
    }
    if($('#Autoscroll.switch.switchOff').length == 1){
        scrolltoggle = 1;
    }
    // return an object
    return  {
           animationtoggle: animationtoggle
           scrolltoggle: scrolltoggle
       };
}

Then you can call the function states() from any where and use that like below:

var states = states();
// get values like below
states.animationtoggle;
states.scrolltoggle;