"A Lightweight Start" Pattern

"A Lightweight Start" Pattern

From Learning JavaScript Design Patterns, a book by Addy Osmani.

Let’s begin our deeper look at plugin patterns with something basic that follows best practices (including those in the jQuery plugin-authoring guide). This pattern is ideal for developers who are either new to plugin development or who just want to achieve something simple (such as a utility plugin). A Lightweight Start uses the following:

• Common best practices such as a semi-colon placed before the functions invocation (we'll go through why in the comments below)
• window, document, undefined passed in as arguments.
• A basic defaults object.
• A simple plugin constructor for logic related to the initial creation and the assignment of the element to * work with.
• Extending the options with defaults.
• A lightweight wrapper around the constructor, which helps to avoid issues such as multiple instantiations.
• Adherence to the jQuery core style guidelines for maximized readability.

1. Code
2. Usage

Further Reading

• Plugins/Authoring, jQuery
• “Signs of a Poorly Written jQuery Plugin,” Remy Sharp
• “How to Create Your Own jQuery Plugin,” Elijah Manor
• “Style in jQuery Plugins and Why It Matters,” Ben Almon
• “Create Your First jQuery Plugin, Part 2,” Andrew Wirick