Kind of subclassed chain

Kind of subclassed chain


I'm developing this plugin where to get the functionality I want, I
would have to pollute the jQuery prototype a lot. This made me think
of an approach where I derive a new class using $.fn as prototype.
Then I could use one “entry method” which returns instances of my
subclass. However this doesn’t work because jQuery methods rely
heavily on the jQuery( elems ) construct which breaks out of my
subclassed chain. This could be remedied by making jQuery methods
dynamically load jQuery i.e. this.jQuery which then could be
overridden. Does that sound doable?
One can argue the approach is flawed because a jQuery chain can easily
transform itself to include elements from outside the original set,
where the additions/modifications of the subclass won’t make any
sense. However that could be solved by dividing the jQuery methods
over two classes in a hierarchy. All methods that can’t widen the set
go into the base class, and the rest into a subclass. Then you can
extend the base class in a more sensible way. Maybe ripping jQuery in
two sounds a bit harsh…
/Andreas Karlsson, Stockholm