Question

Using the prettyPhoto plugin to open modal-style content containers, and trying to integrate with Google Analytics’ Event Tracking to track when videos get opened.

Trouble is, when I

$('a.videoClickListener').click(function(event){
    console.log('here');
    _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Product Page', 'Video Open', '<?php echo $product->getNameWithManufacturer(); ?>']);
});

the event is never fired, as prettyPhoto stops the event from continuing (quite rightly, as otherwise the page would change if a hyperlink was clicked).

prettyPhoto does not seem to provide an ‘open’ callback function, but if it did I couldn’t use it anyway, as the prettyPhoto listeners are set up somewhere in the layout (we use rel="prettyPhoto" every time we want to use prettyPhoto, and pass params through the URL, which is the prettyPhoto-recommended way of doing things). I would also like to pass the product details to Analytics, ruling out a global video-opening listener across all prettyPhoto opening events.

How can I bind my listener before the prettyPhoto listener? If it turns out I have to use .unbind(), then bind my listener, and then rebind prettyPhoto, how can I unbind a handler specified in a plugin?

Answer 1

Ideally, you would be able to add your event binding before any others, so that it executes first.

Unfortunately, jQuery doesn’t seem to include any such facility.

However, I’ve coded a preBind method, which seems to do the trick:

$.fn.preBind = function(type, data, fn) {
  this.bind(type, data, fn);

  var currentBindings = this.data('events')[type];
  var currentBindingsLastIndex = currentBindings.length - 1;

  var newBindings = [];

  newBindings.push(currentBindings[currentBindingsLastIndex]);

  $.each(currentBindings, function (index) {
    if (index < currentBindingsLastIndex)
      newBindings.push(this);
  });

  this.data('events')[type] = newBindings;

  return this;
};

Usage:

$('#button').bind('click', function() {
  console.log('world');
});

// 2nd apostrophe for the selector was missing
$('#button').preBind('click', function() {
  console.log('hello');
});

$('#button').click();

// Output:
//
// > "hello"
// > "world"