Question

the following JS code is being produced from CoffeeScript equivalent.

I want to add objects to a slider widget, properties of these objects come from a Django REST view, nothing fancy, just a list of dictionaries.

I am very new to both CoffeeScript and Django and I don’t understand the visibility of this.

of the two versions here, one works, the other doesn’t.

Slider.prototype.manageObject = function(itemId, colorSequence) {
  var obj;
  obj = this;
  return $.getJSON("http://localhost:8000/api/?item=" + itemId, function(data) {
    return obj.managed.push([itemId, data]);
  });
};

Slider.prototype.manageObject = function(itemId, colorSequence) {
  return $.getJSON("http://localhost:8000/api/?item=" + itemId, function(data) {
    return this.managed.push([itemId, data]);
  });
};

why?

Answer 1

The problem is that value of this depends on the context. It usually refers to the current object, which in the second case is the callback function. By assigning obj = this you keep the original reference to Slider in the variable obj, therefore calling managed.push works, in the second case you are trying to call managed.push function on the callback function which doesn’t exist.

A really great explanation of this: http://www.quirksmode.org/js/this.html and http://javascriptweblog.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/understanding-javascripts-this/