javascript - Is there a better way to create an object-oriented class with jQuery?

Question

I use the jQuery extend function to extend a class prototype.

For example:

MyWidget = function(name_var) {
  this.init(name_var);
}

$.extend(MyWidget.prototype, {
   // object variables
   widget_name: '',

   init: function(widget_name) {
     // do initialization here
     this.widget_name = widget_name;
   },

   doSomething: function() {
     // an example object method
     alert('my name is '+this.widget_name);
   }
});


// example of using the class built above
var widget1 = new MyWidget('widget one');
widget1.doSomething();

Is there a better way to do this? Is there a cleaner way to create the class above with only one statement instead of two?

Answer 1

I quite like John Resig's Simple JavaScript Inheritance.

var MyWidget = Class.extend({
  init: function(widget_name){
    this.widget_name = widget_name;
  },

  doSomething: function() {
    alert('my name is ' + this.widget_name);
  }
});

NB: The "Class" object demonstrated above isn't included in jQuery itself - it's a 25 line snippet from Mr. jQuery himself, provided in the article above.