MooTools Tip: Class.toElement

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Many of you may not know of a feature that's baked into MooTools' Class internals: Class.toElement. Class.toElement allows you to pass the $ (or document.id) method an instance of your class and the instance will be treated as an element.

The MooTools Class.toElement Usage

/* baking into the class */
var myClass = new Class({
	initialize: function(container,options) {
		this.container = $(container);
	},
	// .. lots more methods //
	toElement: function() {
		return this.container;
	}
});

/* usage */
var mc = new MyClass('wrapper');
$(mc).fade('out'); //fades the container out

This isn't a groundbreaking piece of code but it's just another example of the flexibility that MooTools affords its developers. Happy coding!

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Discussion

  1. Haven’t noticed this wonderful tiny yet so useful method before. Thanks for bringing this up :)

  2. jeremy

    i was actually just reading about this today.

    it seems often times the method is used to create the element that gets returned as well, in which case its important to make sure the method doesn’t re-define the element it returns.

    toElement: function() {
    if (this.element) return this element;
    return this.element = new Element(...);
    }
    
  3. Hey, that’s a useful thing! Didn’t know this before, THX for sharing!

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