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var makeSQLDatePretty = function(d) {
  return d.replace(/([0-9]{4})-0?([0-9]{1,2})-0?([0-9]{1,2})/, '$2/$3/$1');
};

Pass in a SQL date and the function trims leading zeros and returns a reformatted date.

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var sqlDate = '2008-12-02';
alert(makeSQLDatePretty(sqlDate)); // should alert '12/2/2008'

Crazy Europeans may want to change the replace regex with ‘$3/$2/$1′.

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function attachedToOnSubmitOfAForm(){
        sp = $("someForm");
        sp.addClass('loader');
 
        sp.send({
                onComplete: function(json) {
                        ....
                },
 
                onFailure:function(){
                        ....
                }
        });
}

Great concept, right? No need to tell it where to send the data or what fields to send, since the form already contains that info. It’s mostly unobtrusive, so any browser that doesn’t have JS enabled would still be able to submit.

So my immediate response was, “Very cool. I’m sure a jQuery plugin either exists or could be created pretty easily to handle that.”

I built the following plugin in maybe 30 minutes, and had it tested in another 15.

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(function(jQuery) {
	jQuery.fn.send = function(options) {
		return this.each(function(){
		    var form = jQuery(this);
			jQuery(this).bind('submit', function() {
				jQuery.ajax(jQuery.extend({
					type     : form.attr('method') || 'get',
					url      : form.attr('action') || window.location.href,
					data     : form.serialize()
				}, options));
				return false;
			});
		});
	};
})(jQuery);

There are some of you that are wondering, “Why is this necessary? I can write my own jQuery.ajax() code every time.” Yep, and that’s part the problem I’m trying to solve. The plugin is a shortcut for most of the jQuery.ajax() code you’d normally write and it makes unobtrusive form submission dead simple:

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jQuery(function(){
	jQuery('form').send({
		complete : function(data) { alert(data.responseText); }
	});
});

The function takes one parameter, an object that extends the jQuery.ajax method.

Here’s a demo and the download.

2008-09-23: Updated window.location to window.location.href (Thanks Samori)

I ran into this issue recently and wrote some cool little handlers for objects. The following methods can be used to iterate through an array manually. I wrote them for Actionscript, but they certainly work for Javascript - although I’d suggest one small modification (shown later).

Let’s get to the code.

In each of the “for in” loops below, I make sure to exclude any prototyped methods. If I don’t, they’ll show up in the loop - which can be pretty bad.

The ‘first’ method starts looping through the array, but returns the first item in the object as soon as it gets to it.

Object.prototype.first = function() {
	for (var s in this) if (!Object.prototype[s]) {
		return s;
	}
};

The ‘last’ method loops through the object, storing the current item in a variable. When it finishes the loop, it returns that variable - the last item in the object.

Object.prototype.last = function() {
	for (var s in this) if (!Object.prototype[s]) {
		var l = s;
	}
	return l;
};

The ‘previous’ method loops through the object looking for the ’subject’ variable. If it matches the variable with the current item, it returns the previous item - set after the if statement below (in the previous time through the loop). If it never matches the variable or the previous item is never set, it will return the last item of the object.

Object.prototype.previous = function(subject) {
	for (var s in this) if (!Object.prototype[s]) {
		if (s == subject && l !== undefined) {
			return l;
		}
		var l = s;
	}
	return this.last();
};

The ‘next’ method loops through the object looking for the ’subject’ variable, as well. However, when it matches the variable it sets a ‘found’ flag. The next time through the loop, the current item will be returned. If it never matches the variable or the matched item is the last in the object, the first item will be returned.

Object.prototype.next = function(subject) {
	var f = false;
	for (var s in this) if (!Object.prototype[s]) {
		if (f) {
			return s;
		}
		if (s == subject) {
			f = true;
		}
	}
	return this.first();
};

So let’s do some examples. My test object has 3 items - one of which contains an array:

var myObject = {
	apple  : [
		'fuji',
		'gala',
		'red delicious'
	],
	banana : 'chiquita',
	orange : 'navel'
};
 
myObject.first(); // returns 'apple'
myObject.last();  // returns 'orange'
myObject.previous('apple'); // returns 'orange'
myObject.next('apple');     // returns 'banana'
myObject.next('banana');    // returns 'orange'
myObject.next('orange');    // returns 'apple'

Simple as that.

The one change that I would recommend looking into for Javascript is better checking for the “for in” loops.

Instead of:

for (var s in this) if (!Object.prototype[s]) {

The hasOwnProperty property is recommended:

for (var s in this) if (s.hasOwnProperty) {

First, just a quick note about this event handler. You won’t find it in any W3C spec because it just isn’t there. Why? I don’t know, but I do know that it’s supported by Firefox and Internet Explorer 6/7 - which is ~90% of the browser usage and possibly more (read: I need to fire up my Mac and test it). Apparently, this event handler has been around for a long time - see this brief e-mail exchange on the HTML users group.

Okay, let’s get started. Recently, I was working with some external data where I didn’t know whether I would have an image with each item the data or not. This is a simple problem that can be solved using server side code (since the data feed needed to be parsed into a database table anyway). However, I found that the links to some of the images returned 404 errors. I’m not a usability expert, but have broken images looks pretty bad, even if you use alt attributes. The onerror event handler is perfect for this situation. Here’s how it works:

You assign the attribute to the image tag with some sort of error handler:

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<img src="badimage.jpg" onerror="fixImage(this);" />

Then, create your error handler function. You could replace the image with a “No image” image (like I did):

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function fixImage(img) {
  img.src = 'noimage.gif';
}

Or you could just remove the image altogether:

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function fixImage(img) {
  img.parentNode.removeChild(img);
}

If you want to read more about using onerror with <body> tags, MDC has some documentation.

That having been said, there are some applications where I cannot use a Javascript library and I need to use the (longer) Javascript methods. There’s nothing wrong with this - in fact, I find that I always learn something new. Such was the case today.

I decided that I would attach some events using the addEventListener function. I had always either used the older method of attaching events or some helper library. So I checked out the spec on MDC and saw that Internet Explorer had its own version of this function called attachEvent. I hate how Internet Explorer does things like this. There are standards for a reason, you know.

Anyway, I wrote a simple function that would apply the event, but it was not working in Internet Explorer. So I started debugging the issue.

“Is the event being attached?” - Yes

Is the event being attached to the right object?” - Yes

Can I alert some text in the event function?” - Yes… odd.

Here’s my function:

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addEvent(this.container, 'mouseover', function(){ this.className = 'over'; });
addEvent = function(el, event, func) {
  if (el.addEventListener) {
    el.addEventListener(event, func, false);
  }
  else if (el.attachEvent) {
    el.attachEvent('on'+event, func);
  }
  else {
    el['on'+event] = func;
  }
};

It turns out that Internet Explorer doesn’t pass the ‘this’ object to the event function. ‘this’ is this instance should be the object that had the event attached.

It’s no shock to people that know me that I hate Internet Explorer. I even sell T-shirts declaring that fact. But this is just stupid.

Why did Microsoft have to implement their own version of addEventListener? Why did they have to implement it so horribly that it doesn’t return ‘this’?

I ended up writing a workaround that just used the older method of applying the event to the object. Here’s the finished version:

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addEvent = function(el, event, func) {
  if (el.addEventListener) {
    el.addEventListener(event, func, false);
  }
  else {
    el['on'+event] = func;
  }
};

It’s really just adding insult to injury, since the only reason I had to write this function is because Internet Explorer doesn’t handle the CSS :hover pseudo-class for DIV elements.

Anyone want a T-shirt?

• January: JavaServer Pages
• February: Java
• March: Java (continued)
• April: MySQL 5
• May: MySQL 5 (continued)
• June: SQLite
• July: Python
• August: Python (continued)
• September: Perl
• October: Perl (continued)
• November: Ext
• December: Ruby

These should really push me out of my comfort zone. I’ll try to share book info and progress and I go along. Wish me luck!

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function addMethod(object, name, fn){
  var old = object[ name ];
  object[ name ] = function(){
    if ( fn.length == arguments.length )
      return fn.apply( this, arguments );
    else if ( typeof old == 'function' )
      return old.apply( this, arguments );
  };
}

Here’s how you could use it to extend the User object that we created earlier.

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addMethod(User.prototype, "find", function(){
  // Find all users...
});
addMethod(User.prototype, "find", function(name){
  // Find a user by name
});
addMethod(User.prototype, "find", function(first, last){
  // Find a user by first and last name
});

You can read more from John’s blog here.

Let’s start with the base object:

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var User = function(firstName, lastName, emailAddress) {
}

We have to initialize the variables so that they’re available to the rest of the methods of this object:

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var User = function(firstName, lastName, emailAddress) {
  this.firstName = firstName;
  this.lastName = lastName;
  this.emailAddress = emailAddress;
}

Then let’s start creating the methods:

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User.prototype = {
  add: function() {
    alert('User added: ' + this.getFullName());
  },
  changeEmail: function(email) {
    this.emailAddress = email;
    alert('E-mail address for '+ this.getFullName() +' changed to: ' + this.emailAddress);
  },
  getFullName: function() {
    return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName;
  }
}

Lastly, let’s run the add() method when we setup a new user:

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var User = function(firstName, lastName, emailAddress) {
  this.firstName = firstName;
  this.lastName = lastName;
  this.emailAddress = emailAddress;
  this.add();
}

Alright, that’s all done. Now what do we do with this thing?

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// alerts 'User added: Michael Bolton'
var michael = new User('Michael', 'Bolton', 'mbolton@initech.com');
// alerts 'E-mail address for Michael Bolton changed to: michael.bolton@initrode.com'
michael.changeEmail('michael.bolton@initrode.com');
// alerts 'Hello, Michael'
alert('Hello, ' + michael.firstName);

Here it is in one big snippet:

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var User = function(firstName, lastName, emailAddress) {
  this.firstName = firstName;
  this.lastName = lastName;
  this.emailAddress = emailAddress;
  this.add();
}
 
User.prototype = {
  add: function() {
    alert('User added: ' + this.getFullName());
  },
  changeEmail: function(email) {
    this.emailAddress = email;
    alert('E-mail address for '+ this.getFullName() +' changed to: ' + this.emailAddress);
  },
  getFullName: function() {
    return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName;
  }
}
 
// alerts 'User added: Michael Bolton'
var michael = new User('Michael', 'Bolton', 'mbolton@initech.com');
// alerts 'E-mail address for Michael Bolton changed to: michael.bolton@initrode.com'
michael.changeEmail('michael.bolton@initrode.com');
// alerts 'Hello, Michael'
alert('Hello, ' + michael.firstName);