Setting a variable in a jquery-function

Question

ok, I know, the title may sound a little weird...

Following problem:

I have a jquery function like this:

(function($){
    $.fn.myFunction = function(opts){
        var settings = {
           params: {}
        };
    }

    if ( options ) { 
      $.extend( settings, options );
    }

}

Now, the function is applied to an element like this:

$('#elem').myFunction({'data':'test','data2': 'test2'});

How do I access the settings-property from outside of the function?

Means, after the function is initialized, I want to change some of the settings - I can't figure out how, though.

Any ideas?

(hope it's not too confusing what I wrote :)

Richard Neil Ilagan · Accepted Answer · 2012-08-23 13:25:29Z

1

You'll have to take the variable up into higher level scope.

(function ($) {

    // we expose your variable up here
    var settings = {
    };

    $.fn.myFunction = function (opts) {
        // ...instead of down here
        // do something with settings, like:
        opts = $.extend({}, settings, opts);
    }

    // you can then access a "shared" copy of your variable even here
    if (options) {
        $.extend(settings, options);
    }

})(jQuery);

If you have to expose it further, you'll just have to work along that same gist.

As a side note however, do note that calling $.extend(settings, options) will modify the settings variable. A nice way to do the same thing without modifying the original settings value is to call $.extend() on an empty object, and just cache the return like I did in the first $.extend() call in my example.

var modified_options = $.extend({}, settings, options);

answered Aug 23, 2012 at 13:25

Richard Neil Ilagan

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1 Comment

Swissdude Over a year ago

Thanks for that... But I need to change the settings when I init the object without calling a function of the object. When I try to access «settings» from outside the object, I get an error saying that «settings» is not defined.

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