Take a very simple jQuery plugin boilerplate: var _defaults = { foo: false };

Question

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Asked: June 13, 20262026-06-13T17:32:58+00:00 2026-06-13T17:32:58+00:00

Take a very simple jQuery plugin boilerplate: var _defaults = { foo: false };

0

Take a very simple jQuery plugin boilerplate:

var _defaults = {
  foo: false
};

function Plugin( settings ) {
  this.opts = $.extend( {}, _defaults, settings );
}

I have a doSomething method that can only run successfully if the option foo is set to true and there are other methods that may doSomething() at a certain point so I had a dilemma on where to place my if statement. First I thought:

Plugin.prototype = {
  doSomething: function() {
    // Do something that depends on foo
  },
  method: function() {
    ...
    if ( this.opts.foo ) { this.doSomething() }
  },
  method: function() {
    ...
    if ( this.opts.foo ) { this.doSomething() }
  }
};

But then for the sake of DRYness I decided to do this:

Plugin.prototype = {
  doSomething: function() {
    if ( this.opts.foo ) {
      // Do something that depends on foo
    }
  },
  method: function() {
    ...
    this.doSomething();
  },
  method: function() {
    ...
    this.doSomething();
  }
};

So now methods that may utilize doSomething run the function regardless of it being empty if foo is false.

So my question is, what is a better approach? The second one is shorter but it has to look-up the method everytime even if it’s not necessary just to perhaps run an empty function. So is the first one more efficient?

Oh, and yes, I know probably this is micro-optimization and folks will say don’t worry about it but I’m just curious…