将html分配给javascript变量是一种好习惯吗？

Question

I am a newbie to html/css/javascript and code like this really scares me:

http://code.google.com/apis/maps/documentation/javascript/overlays.html#InfoWindows

Is assigning html to javascript variable a good practice? or I hope there is a substitute.

Answer 1

There is nothing wrong with it. After all, it is really no different then typing the same thing outside of the javascript block.

I do however find, that the formatting and the likes can be annoying. On use JQuery a fair bit, and depending on what I might be doing I might use a .html() or .clone() method to create html form another element.

JQuery also has a template plugin which when used does allow for you to get slightly better formatting, and you can also specify dynamic values. Which is great for creating dynamic tables that update with Ajax for example.

Another side note, the fact that example you gave was on a Google site, would usually be enough to convince me it is OK to do ;)

Answer 2

There's nothing bad in it. People have been doing this since there was a thing called DHTML :-)

AFAIK, this is one of the most performant ways to build a part of document (later to be inserted to DOM or whatever).

Answer 3

In this case you have to, since google Maps API requires explicitly to pass a HTML content (and not a reference to some hidden element in page or loaded via ajax).

This don't mean it's a bad practice: for example, I always use a HTML string along with some custom template system, so that I can pass infowindow HTML in a loop, changing dynamically some chunks of markup with data retrieved by a JSON.

Anyway you can still use an element into the DOM and then pass its outerHTML string to the API if this makes your application more performant with an improved maintainability