MooTools Tip: Class.toElement

By  on  

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!

Recent Features

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools Zoomer Plugin

    I love to look around the MooTools Forge. As someone that creates lots of plugins, I get a lot of joy out of seeing what other developers are creating and possibly even how I could improve them. One great plugin I've found is...

  • By
    Create a Clearable TextBox with the Dojo Toolkit

    Usability is a key feature when creating user interfaces;  it's all in the details.  I was recently using my iPhone and it dawned on my how awesome the "x" icon is in its input elements.  No holding the delete key down.  No pressing it a...

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!

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!