Question

Say I want to make a little plugin called ‘alertMeOnRemove’, which is self explanatory. I want it to override the remove() function for just the elements it is called on.

$('a').alertMeOnRemove();
$('div').remove(); // no alert
$('a.subset-of-a').remove(); //alert
$('a').remove() //alert

I know general overriding of jQuery function is both possible and easy. Is this possible?

Answer 1

Yeah, that wouldn’t be difficult.

(function(){
    var _remove = $.fn.remove;

    $.fn.alertMeOnRemove = function(){
        this.each(function(){
            $.data(this, 'alertMeOnRemove', true);
        });
    };

    $.fn.remove = function(){
        this.each(function(){
            if ($.data(this, 'alertMeOnRemove')) {
                alert('removing item');
            }
        });

        _remove.call(this);
    };
})();