I'm facing for the first time OOP in JavaScript and all the troubles that comes with it...
I have this function/Object/class/whatever which has a method mainLoop()
that should display some falling text - just like in the movie The Matrix. When I call it though I get undefined variables errors and using the debugger I see that inside mainLoop()
this
is pointing to Window
instead of the object that called the method.
Here's the code:
function Matrix(config) {
return {
//[...lots of other vars...],
drops: [],
lines: [],
//final string to put in the container
str: "",
mainLoop: function(){
var tmp = "";
//randomly create a "character drop"
//(not if there's already a drop)
for(var i = 0; i < this.cols; i++){
if(this.drops[i] == 0 && Math.random() < this.freq){
this.drops[i] = irandom(this.rows) + 1;//new drop
tmp += randomChar();//output drop
}
else tmp += lines[0].charAt(i);
}
this.lines[0] = tmp; // <-------------- ERROR
//update already created drops
tmp = "";
for(var j = 0; j < this.cols; j++){
if(this.drops[j] > 0){
tmp += this.randomChar();
this.drops[j]--;
}
else tmp += " ";
}
this.lines[this.rowIndex] = tmp;
this.rowIndex = (this.rowIndex+1) % this.rows;
//render the entire text
this.str = "";
for(var l in this.lines)
this.str += l + "<br/>";
$(container).html = this.str;
},
start: function(){
for(var i = 0; i < this.cols; i++)
this.drops[i] = 0;
timer = setInterval(this.mainLoop ,this.delay);
},
stop: function(){
clearInterval(this.timer);
},
randomChar: function(){
return this.chars.charAt(irandom(this.chars.length));
},
irandom: function(x){
return Math.floor(Math.random()*x);
}
}
};
And then I call this function like this:
var config = {
container: "#container",
rows: 20,
cols: 20,
delay: 2000
};
var m = Matrix(config);
m.start();
The browser console says:
TypeError: this.lines is undefined
(code comment shows the exact point of the error). Furthermore, the debugger says that, at that point, this
points to Window
, not to m
as I would expect... what's wrong with my reasoning? Thanks in advance for any help.