Understanding jquery snippet, window.*

Question

I'm debugging a piece of jquery and found this snippet which i don't understand.

Would someone mind breaking it down so that I can research the individual parts?

 window.specific = $('.' + specific_class);

By prefixing window., the variable will be globally defined. This makes it easier to debug the variable's value (via the console, for instance). — Rob W
– Rob W, Commented Dec 2, 2012 at 11:30
It simply caches the list of elements matched by .specific_class in a global variable. — Ja͢ck
– Ja͢ck, Commented Dec 2, 2012 at 11:43

Lightness Races in Orbit · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-02 11:38:01Z

1

specific is defined in "window scope" outside the function. specific_class would have some class name in it and it is used in jQuery selector and matched elements are assigned to window.specific.

Live Demo

window.specific = "";
specific_class =  'someclass';

function myfun()
{
    window.specific = $('.' + specific_class);
}

edited Dec 2, 2012 at 11:38

Lightness Races in Orbit

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answered Dec 2, 2012 at 11:26

Adil

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1 Comment

rix Over a year ago

Thanks for the fiddle, so window.specific is a global object which refers to all instances of .specific_class. But since you can already target every '.specific_class' i'm curious as to why this is necessary - I'm sure this will become clear though...

Mat Richardson · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-02 11:28:37Z

1

This sets the 'specific' property of the window object to a class defined by the specific_class variable.

Let's say that the specific_class variable contained the text 'myClass', then window.specific would be equal to:-

window.specific = $('.myClass');

Which in turn would refer to all instances of the myClass class.

answered Dec 2, 2012 at 11:28

Mat Richardson

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Comments

Bram Vanroy · Accepted Answer · 2012-12-02 11:27:04Z

0

Basically it looks for a class...

. is the argument for a class selector. specific_class is a variable which will refer to the class name. Look for that variable and you'll find what the class means.

answered Dec 2, 2012 at 11:27

Bram Vanroy

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