Need help in my jquery plugin

Question

Last week a made a function for ellipsing the text inside some selector.

I was calling the function like this:

ellipsiText('.class',50) passing the selector and the max length of the text that i wanted to. This works fine, but im trying to make it a plugin, to call like this: $('.class').ellipsiText(50).

So, i was reading the tutorial in jquery website, and i understood how to do it. But i think i'm having an issue with the "this" seletor. Here is my original function:

function ellipsiText(selector,maxLength){


    var array = $(selector).map(function(){
        return $(this).text();
    }).get();

    var i;

    var teste = [];

    for (i=0;i<array.length;i++){

        if (array[i].length > maxLength){

        teste.push(array[i].substr(0,maxLength) + "...");

        } else {

            teste.push(array[i]);
        }
    }

    for (var i=0;i<teste.length;i++){

    $(selector).each(function(i){

        $(this).text(teste[i]);

    });

    }


}

and here is my tentative of making a jquery plugin:

(function ($) {

    $.fn.ellipsiText = function(length){

        var array = $(this).map(function(){
            return $(this).text();
            }).get();

        var i;
        var teste = [];

        for (i = 0; i < array.length; i++){
            if (array[i] > length){
                teste.push(array[i].substr(0,length) + "...");
            } else {
                teste.push(array[i]);
            }
        }

        $(this).each(function(i){

            $(this).text(teste[i]);

        }); 
    };

}(jQuery));

What am i doing wrong?

Answer 1

Well first thing is not a problem, but instead of $(this) in the first function scope, you can use this.map/this.each .

The problem is, in the second code you do

if (array[i] > length)

instead of

if (array[i].length > length)

Nothing to do with the jQuery plugin!

http://jsfiddle.net/UY88r/

Answer 2

You already have a working function, just use it.

$.ellipsiText = ellipsiText;
$.fn.ellipsiText = function (count) {
    ellipsiText(this, count);
}

now you can use it like any of the following:

ellipsiText('.class',50);
$.ellipsiText('.class',50);
$('.class').ellipsiText(50);

There's no sense in rewriting the function you already have working when you can just use it.

Answer 3

This is untested, but the basic structure is something like this. Also you have so much looping in your code when one loop is needed.

$.fn.ellipsiText= function(options) {

    var settings = $.extend({  //nice way to give to give defaults
        length : 50,
        ellipsi : "..."
        }, options );

    return this.each(function() {  //the return is needed for chaining
        var elem = $(this);
        var txt = elem.text();
        if (txt.length>settings.length) {
             elem.text(txt.substr(0,settings.length) + settings.ellipsi );
        }
    });

};

and call it

$( "div.defaults" ).ellipsiText();

$( "div.foo" ).ellipsiText({
    length : 10
});

$( "div.more" ).ellipsiText({
    length : 10,
    ellipsi : "<more>"    
});