Greasemonkey closures

I’m writing up a greasemonkey script that adds onclick behavior to the span. According to the site, you do something like

thisDiv.addEventListener('click',function(){
    // function code here
},true);

This works OK, but what if my code needs scope? Say I wanted to search for some divs and have them tell which match they are when clicked. This code won’t work:

for(i=0; i<allDivs.snapshotLength; i++){
    var thisDiv=allDivs.getSnapshotItem(i);
    thisDiv.addEventListener('click',function(){
        alert(i);
    },true);
}

If there were 10 matching divs, this will alert “10” every time. On the other hand, this code will work:

for(i=0; i<allDivs.snapshotLength; i++){
    var thisDiv=allDivs.getSnapshotItem(i);
    thisDiv.addEventListener('click',(function(i){return function(){
        alert(i);
    };)(i),true);
}

This is helpful when you want your modifications to retain access to functions like GM_setValue without using unsafeWindow. This way won’t work:

for(i=0; i<allDivs.snapshotLength; i++){
    var thisDiv=allDivs.getSnapshotItem(i);
    thisDiv.addEventListener('click',function(){
        GM_setValue('mydata',i);
    },true);
}

This way will:

for(i=0; i<allDivs.snapshotLength; i++){
    var thisDiv=allDivs.getSnapshotItem(i);
    thisDiv.addEventListener('click',(function(i,GM_setValue){return function(){
        GM_setValue('mydata',i);
    };)(GM_setValue,i),true);
}

Greasemonkey scripts

I’ve posted a few greasemonkey scripts on my site.

I Got Another Journal Publication

“Bit Commitment Blues” has been published in Journal of Craptology!