Question

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Caching $(this) in jQuery is a best practice?

I am curious, within the same function, when $(this) is called multiple times does it incur additional overhead for constructing the jQuery object in the subsequent calls? In other words, is $(this) cached the first time it’s called? If not, would it be a better practice to store $(this) in a variable and use that variable when $(this) is needed subsequently?

Answer 1

$() is the jQuery constructor function.

this is a reference to the DOM element of invocation.

so basically, in $(this), you are just passing the this in $() as a parameter so that you could call jQuery methods and functions.

http://www.learningjquery.com/2007/08/what-is-this

good figures: http://jsperf.com/jquery-this-vs-this-vs-chain/2

You usually use var $this = $(this); to avoid creating a new jQuery object more often than necessary. In case of the code below you only create one object instead of two/four. It is completely unrelated to chainability.

this in javascript (usually) represents a reference to the object that invoked the current function.

Generally the purpose of storing $(this) in a local variable is to prevent you from calling the jQuery function $() multiple times, caching a jQueryized this should help efficiency if you have to use it multiple times.

$ is simply a valid variable name character and is used as the first character of a variable name usually to queue the programmer that it is a jQuery object already (and has the associated methods/properties available).

$this vs $(this) in jQuery