Some jquery plugin extend widget use _create method, while others use _init method, can someone explain the differences between the two?
Also any guidance on when it is better to extend widget or directly extend jquery.fn?
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3 Answers
From the jQuery UI Developer Guide:
Once the element is created, all other calls to the widget name where the first parameter is not a string will call the _init() method; if options are passed, the .option() method will be called before the _init() method
2 Comments
Joe Atzberger
Unfortunately, link is now toast.
Mottie
The downside to extending widget (as opposed to $.fn) is that you create a dependency on jquery-ui which defines the widget "class". That dependency could be expensive for users of your plugin that don't also use jquery-ui.
As far as _create vs _init goes, I'm pretty sure that _init came first and then in a recent revision they introduced and favor _create. I might be wrong about this, but I believe that _init is still supported. If it is then there shouldn't be any differences between the two.
3 Comments
Gelin Luo
Good point on widget. Do you have any replacement of widget if I don't want to introduce additional dependency to jqueryui?
Ken Browning
You could just rip out the widget code and include it in your .js file. There was talk about moving widget into jquery itself instead of jqueryui but I don't know if that's been slated for a specific release or not yet.
jsgoupil
There is a different between the _init and _create. _create is called only once. _init will be called multiple time as mentionned from @fudgey
A widget has three phases:
+-------+----------------+---------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Phase | Name | jQuery Method | Description |
+-------+----------------+---------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| 1 | Creation | _create | First time the widget is applied to an element, it is called. |
| 2 | Initialization | _int | The _init method is called after _create when the widget is first applied to its elements. |
| 3 | Destruction | destroy | The widget's destroy method is used to detach a widget from an element. |
+-------+----------------+---------------+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
NOTE: The method names starting with an underscore are meant to be private by convention.
So there is a difference between _create and _init. One is used for creation and the other is used for initialization. Every time you call the widget with no arguments or with options, it will indirectly call _init method. Therefore, this can be used to reset (re-initialize) a widget or pass it different options.
More details about each phase here.
