Question

Looking for some really quick help,

contactForm={
    that: this,
    lilfield: 'I just equal this',
    fields: new Array("hc_name","hc_email","hc_telephone"),
    submit_button: jQuery("#hc_submit"),
    init: function(){
        that.lilAlert();
    },
    lilAlert: function(){
        alert("lets pump this out");
    }
}

The above is just an example, but effectively what i’m trying to achieve is that the variable that can be used to proceed calls rather than referencing the object ‘contactForm’ itself. Also that is a little safer to use than this, due to auto passing of this on events such as click etc with jQuery.

Answer 1

Two things.

1. Your that is pointing to the this that created the contactForm, not the actual contactForm as you expect.
2. Your that is a property of the contact form so you need to access it via this.that or contactForm.that, which kind of breaks the original purpose.

Either:

1. Reference contactForm itself

2. or define the thats inside the functions that need it

   init: function(){
       var that = this;
       that.lilalert();
   }
   

---

If all you want to do is avoid this shenanigans, an alternative is using closures (and therefore lexical, static scope instead of dynamic binding via this)

function make_contact_form(){
    var lilfield: 'I just equal this';
    var fields =  ["hc_name","hc_email","hc_telephone"]; //dont use new Array. its evil
    var submit_button = jQuery("#hc_submit");
    var init = function(){
        lilAlert(); //lilAlert is a name is scope. call it directly
    };
    var lilAlert =  function(){
        alert("lets pump this out");
    };

    return {
        lilfield: lilfield,
        fields: fields,
        submit_button: submit_button,
        init: init,
        lilAlert: lilAlert
    };
}