Calling a function in a jquery plugin

Question

I am trying to get the object of a jquery plug in I'm making use of. I want to eventually be able to add features to the plugin to suit my needs. I am currently having a problem with calling one the functions I defined in the plug in. Here is the skeleton of the code I have:

;(function($) {
      $.fn.myPlugin = function(o) {
                    .//Implementations here
                    .
                    .
            var Ex =  function(e){
                    //implementations here
            };

      }; 

})(jQuery);

The reason I want this function inside is because I want access to some of the variables defined. I would like be able to call function Ex from my html file but whatever I tried so far hasn't worked. An example of what I have tried is:

$.fn.myPlugin.Ex("x");

No return statement anywhere. I'm not great at javascript or jquery but I'm trying to learn. Any help in explaining what I'm doing wrong is appreciated.

Answer 1

Your plugin design pattern is wrong.

To achieve what you want, you can use this common one :

;(function($){
  var methods = {
     init: function() {
       //stuff
     },
     function1: function() {
       //stuff
     },
     function2: function(opt) {
       //stuff
     }
  };
  $.fn.myPlugin= function(method) {
    if (methods[method]) {
      return methods[method].apply(this, Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments,1));
    } else if (typeof method === 'object' || ! method) {
      return methods.init.apply(this, arguments);
    } 
  };
})(jQuery);

With this structure :

$.fn.myPlugin(); will call init()

$.fn.myPlugin("function1"); will call function1()

$.fn.myPlugin("function2",option_exemple); will call function2(opt)

Disclaimer : I use this very often, but it's not mine. Can't remember where I found it*.

• edit : http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Authoring , thanks to Beetroot-Beetroot for the reminder !