Level 2 Has An Opening

Nate Johnson — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 22:24:22 +0000

Level 2 Design is looking for a web programmer.
The position will start out on a contract basis, with a goal of full time-employment.

The job requirements are as follows:

Expertise:
PHP/MySQL
HTML
CSS
Javascript (jQuery, Ajax, etc.)

Familiar with:
Flash Actionscript/Flex
PHP frameworks (Cake, CodeIgnitor, Zend, etc.)
ASP
Server maintenance
DNS configuration

The job includes building comprehensive websites with complex IA and various features for users. You will be working closely with a team of other developers, and designers to create the best possible products for clients.

If you are interested feel free to give us a call at 423.779.7172

JavaScript Options Object

Philip Brown — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 17:32:18 +0000

I don’t know how many times in the past I have found myself using a class and I want to change only one of the optional parameters but it just so happens to be the last argument. In order to avoid changing the default value I have to look at the objects source code. There are two ways to avoid this issue.

The first is to create setter functions for each option. I have several problems with this solution:

It requires time to create separate functions.
It requires more code and that means larger file size.
Creates more functions to document.
I like formatting my code so that I only have have one function on each line.
If I want to change three default options that means I will now have possibly 3 more lines of code.

The second way is to have parameter that allows options to be passed as a JSON object. It uses default options that can be over written just by sending in a JSON object specifying only the settings you want to overwrite.

Example:

   1:  Menu = {

   2:      initialize: function(button, menuElem, options)

   3:      {

   4:          this.button = (button);

   5:          this.menuElem = (menuElem);

   6:          this.setOptions(options);

   7:      },

   8:      setOptions(options)

   9:      {

  10:          this.options =    { align:'center', hide:true}

  11:          // extra {} prevents extending with null

  12:          Object.extend(this.options, options || {});

  13:      }

  14:  }

  15:  Woo = new Menu('myButton', 'myMenu', { hide: false });

This way of doing things is not my idea. Not even close. jQuery uses it as do many others. The first place I saw it was two years ago in Rico JavaScript library.

So why am I revisiting this method of option handling? It is because my next post will cover how to port this brilliant methodology to PHP5.

Level 2D Blog » Javascript

Level 2 Has An Opening

JavaScript Options Object