DOM helper: $id()

[FND]

The attached patch introduces the $id() function* as a shortcut for document.getElementById().

Apart from being a convenience, this also saves ~2 kB of code.

* name tentative; chosen to prevent conflicts with Prototype's $() function

[MartinBudden]

Patch to this needs revision to take into account changes made in ticket #475 and #481

[FND]

updated patch to account for #475 and #481

[FND]

Milestone changed to v2.3.1 to prevent additional work in the future (further core changes might require yet another revision of this patch).

[MartinBudden]

Agreed not to implement in developer conference call. Instead we will add support for getElementsByClassName.

[tbr]

Can you please elaborate (a bit) on the reason(s) for not implementing such a function? I believe this to be good js practice, hence desireable for future tw core/plugin development. One might even want to implement an extended version of the initially requested function, like the following:

function $() {
	var elems = new Array();
	for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i++) {
		var el = arguments[i];
		if (typeof el == 'string')
			el = document.getElementById(el);
		if (arguments.length == 1)
			return el;
		elems.push(el);
	}
	return elems;
}

source:  http://www.dustindiaz.com/top-ten-javascript

[FND]

The original reasoning for rejecting this was that it is merely an abbreviation/redirection to shorten the code and/or reduce typing. (If we were to go down that path, we would start with functions other than getElementById(), e.g. createTiddlyElement()).

Might be worth revisiting now though...

[FND]

To be superseded by jCore projected.