I'm trying to group some exisiting top-level functions inside a closure (to avoid polluting the global namespace) but I'm not quite getting it to work.
First, all the JS works outside my anonymous function, but once I put it in the anonymous function I get an error of "crossfade is not defined". Does anyone see anything completely obvious that I am missing?
I'm not quite getting why the the setInterval/crossfade works outside the anonymous function but not inside. Anything inside start() should be able to see vars/functions outside start() and it should all be protected in the closure created by the top-level anonymous function? I'm not trying to access anything within crossfade(), I'm just trying to execute it.
(function($) {
//vars up here that internal functions can access
//also using some jquery inside here, so using $
function crossfade() {
//body here
}
//other functions
function start() {
//body here
cInterval = setInterval('crossfade()', 5000);
}
})(jQuery);
The
setInterval
method will be run in the scope of the window, so the crossfade function doesn't exist there. You have to make an anonymous function so that a closure is created that contains a reference to the function:To avoid polluting the global scope, you can do a few things:
When
setInterval
is passed a string, the string is evaluated in global scope. That explains whycrossfade
is not visible whensetInterval
fires.setInterval
can also be passed a function reference:in which case your code will work as expected, since
crossfade
is visible at the point where you callsetInterval
.Using
setInterval('crossfade()', 5000);
doesn't create a closure - it creates a string to beeval()
d. You should use a function instead: