Question

What’s the right way to use the arguments property of a function?
This is how I’m currently using it, but I’m pretty sure I’m not using it correctly:

First, I define my parameters:

parameters = {};
parameters.ID = $tr.data('ID');
parameters.Name = 'Name goes here';
parameters.td = $td;
UpdateName(parameters);

And in the function:

var UpdateName = function(){
    var local = {};
    local.ID = arguments[0].ID;
    local.Name = arguments[0].Name;
    local.td = arguments[0].td;

    local.jqXHR = $.ajax('Remote/Ajax.cfc', {
        data: {
            method:'UpdateName'
            ,returnformat:'json'
            ,ID:local.ID
            ,Name:local.Name
        }
    });
    local.jqXHR.success(function(result){
        if (result.MSG == '') {
            local.td.text(local.Name).addClass('success');
        } else {
            local.td.addClass('err');
        };
    });
    local.jqXHR.error(function(result){
        local.td.addClass('err');
    });
}

Answer 1

JavaScript functions are capable of using named arguments.

In your case, this could simplify your code as follows:

var UpdateName = function(local) {
    $.ajax('Remote/Ajax.cfc', {
        data: {
            method:'UpdateName',
            returnformat:'json',
            ID:local.ID,
            Name:local.Name,
            success: function(result) {
                if (result.MSG == '') {
                    local.td.text(local.Name).addClass('success');
                } else {
                    local.td.addClass('err');
                }
            },
            error: function(result) {
                local.td.addClass('err');
            }
        }
    });
}

I modified the code so that you don’t need to keep a reference to jqXHR anymore since you aren’t doing anything with it anyway. I also moved the leading commas to the end of each line, but that is just a preference.