Friday, July 4, 2008

Chaining Functions in JavaScript

A lil snippet I borrowed from the Google AJAX libraries API:

chain = function(args) {
    return function() {
     for(var i = 0; i < args.length; i++) {
      args[i]();
     }
    }
   };
You're probably familiar with the multiple window onload method written by Simon Willison which creates a closure of functions within functions in order to chain them.
Here is the same functionality using the chain function defined above.
function addLoad(fn) {
    window.onload = typeof(window.onload) != 'function' ? fn : chain([onload, fn]);
};
Chain can also be namespaced to the Function.prototype if thats how you like your JS.
Function.prototype.chain = function(args) {
    args.push(this);
    return function() {
     for(var i = 0; i < args.length; i++) {
      args[i]();
     }
    }
   };
So the multiple window onload function would be:
window.addLoad = function(fn) {
    window.onload = typeof(window.onload) != 'function' 
    ? fn : window.onload.chain([fn]);
   };

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