jquery animation callback - how to pass parameters to callback

Question

I´m building a jquery animation from a multidimensional array, and in the callback of each iteration i would like to use an element of the array. However somehow I always end up with last element of the array instead of all different elements.

html:

<div id="square" style="background-color: #33ff33; width: 100px; height: 100px; position: absolute; left: 100px;"></div>

javascript:

$(document).ready(function () {

// Array with Label, Left pixels and Animation Lenght (ms)
LoopArr = new Array(
    new Array(['Dog', 50, 500]),
    new Array(['Cat', 150, 5000]),
    new Array(['Cow', 200, 1500])
);

$('#square').click(function() {

for (x in LoopArr) {
    $("#square").animate({ left: LoopArr[x][0][1] }, LoopArr[x][0][2], function() {
        alert (LoopArr[x][0][0]);
    });
}

});

});

`

Current result: Cow, Cow, Cow

Desired result: Dog, Cat, Cow

How can I make sure the relevant array element is returned in the callback?

Answer 1

The problem is that x is modified by the time the callback evaluates it. You need to create a separate closure for it:

for (x in LoopArr) {
    $("#square").animate({ left: LoopArr[x][0][1] }, LoopArr[x][0][2], 
      (function (z) {
        return function() {
            alert (LoopArr[z][0][0]);
        }
    })(x));
}

I've renamed the parameter to z here for clarification, you're passing x as an argument to the function, which returns a function that makes use of the scoped z variable, which stores the state of x when it is passed.

Answer 2

Classic error in Javascript. Try this:

for (x in LoopArr) {
    (function(x) {
      $("#square").animate({ left: LoopArr[x][0][1] }, LoopArr[x][0][2], function() {
        alert (LoopArr[x][0][0]);
      });
    })(x);
}

That makes sure that there's a distinct variable for each animation callback function created as the loop executes.