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660

answers:

3

As detailed elsewhere, and otherwise apparently well-known, Internet Explorer (definitely 7, and in some instances, 8) do not implement key functions, in particular on Array (such as forEach, indexOf, etc).

There are a number of workarounds here and there, but I'd like to fold a proper, canonical set of implementations into our site rather than copy and paste or hack away at our own implementations. I've found js-methods, which looks promising, but thought I'd post here to see whether another library comes more highly-recommended. A couple of misc. criteria:

  • the lib should just be a no-op for those functions that a browser already has implementations for (js-methods appears to do quite well here)
  • non-GPL, please, though LGPL is acceptable
+1  A: 

By 'not implement key functions' you actually means 'conforms to the ECMA 262 3'rd ed' right? :)

The methods you are referring to are part of the new 5'th edition - for browsers not supporting this you can use the following 'shim' that extends 3'rd into 5'th http://github.com/kriskowal/narwhal-lib/blob/narwhal-lib/lib/global-es5.js.

Sean Kinsey
That's a good start, but there are quite a few errors in the implementations not taken from MDC. eg. many of the array methods don't pass enough arguments to their callbacks, and don't act quite right in the case of array mutation in the callback function.
bobince
I'll take whatever I can get to make js a more sane / minimally-capable language. </snark> :-)
Chas Emerick
+5  A: 

Many use the MDC fallback implementations (eg. for indexOf). They're generally rigorously standards-compliant, even to the extent of explicitly checking the types of all the arguments.

Unfortunately whilst it is clear that the authors regard this code as trivial and freely-usable, there doesn't seem to be an explicit licence-grant to put this in writing. The wiki as a whole is CC Attribution-ShareAlike, if that's an acceptable licence (though CC isn't designed for code as such).

js-methods looks OK in general, but is not as standards-compliant around the edges of how the functions are supposed to be (eg. undefined list items, functions that mutate the list). It's also full of other random non-standard methods, including some questionable ones like the dodgy stripTags and the incomplete UTF-8 codec (which is also a bit unnecessary given the unescape(encodeURIComponent) trick).

For what it's worth, here's what I use (which I hereby release into the public domain, if it can be said to be copyrightable at all). It's a bit shorter than the MDC versions as it doesn't attempt to type-sniff that you haven't done something silly like pass non-function callbacks or non-integer indexes, but apart from that it attempts to be standards-compliant. (Let me know if I've missed anything. ;-))

'use strict';

// Add ECMA262-5 method binding if not supported natively
//
if (!('bind' in Function.prototype)) {
    Function.prototype.bind= function(owner) {
        var that= this;
        if (arguments.length<=1) {
            return function() {
                return that.apply(owner, arguments);
            };
        } else {
            var args= Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 1);
            return function() {
                return that.apply(owner, arguments.length===0? args : args.concat(Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments)));
            };
        }
    };
}

// Add ECMA262-5 string trim if not supported natively
//
if (!('trim' in String.prototype)) {
    String.prototype.trim= function() {
        return this.replace(/^\s+/, '').replace(/\s+$/, '');
    };
}

// Add ECMA262-5 Array methods if not supported natively
//
if (!('indexOf' in Array.prototype)) {
    Array.prototype.indexOf= function(find, i /*opt*/) {
        if (i===undefined) i= 0;
        if (i<0) i+= this.length;
        if (i<0) i= 0;
        for (var n= this.length; i<n; i++)
            if (i in this && this[i]===find)
                return i;
        return -1;
    };
}
if (!('lastIndexOf' in Array.prototype)) {
    Array.prototype.lastIndexOf= function(find, i /*opt*/) {
        if (i===undefined) i= this.length-1;
        if (i<0) i+= this.length;
        if (i>this.length-1) i= this.length-1;
        for (i++; i-->0;) /* i++ because from-argument is sadly inclusive */
            if (i in this && this[i]===find)
                return i;
        return -1;
    };
}
if (!('forEach' in Array.prototype)) {
    Array.prototype.forEach= function(action, that /*opt*/) {
        for (var i= 0, n= this.length; i<n; i++)
            if (i in this)
                action.call(that, this[i], i, this);
    };
}
if (!('map' in Array.prototype)) {
    Array.prototype.map= function(mapper, that /*opt*/) {
        var other= new Array(this.length);
        for (var i= 0, n= this.length; i<n; i++)
            if (i in this)
                other[i]= mapper.call(that, this[i], i, this);
        return other;
    };
}
if (!('filter' in Array.prototype)) {
    Array.prototype.filter= function(filter, that /*opt*/) {
        var other= [], v;
        for (var i=0, n= this.length; i<n; i++)
            if (i in this && filter.call(that, v= this[i], i, this))
                other.push(v);
        return other;
    };
}
if (!('every' in Array.prototype)) {
    Array.prototype.every= function(tester, that /*opt*/) {
        for (var i= 0, n= this.length; i<n; i++)
            if (i in this && !tester.call(that, this[i], i, this))
                return false;
        return true;
    };
}
if (!('some' in Array.prototype)) {
    Array.prototype.some= function(tester, that /*opt*/) {
        for (var i= 0, n= this.length; i<n; i++)
            if (i in this && tester.call(that, this[i], i, this))
                return true;
        return false;
    };
}

Other ECMA262-5 methods not implemented here include Array reduce/reduceRight, the JSON ones and the few new Object methods that can be reliably implemented as JS functions.

bobince
Thanks for that pointer -- the other links I've seen into mozdev where such impls might be found were stale. FYI, the code is MIT-licensed, as specified here: https://developer.mozilla.org/Project:Copyrights (about as good as you can get! :-)
Chas Emerick
Interestingly, if I reference a js file containing all of the MDC ECMA262-5 impls before jquery 1.4.2, jquery is broken -- e.g. all selectors fail, returning null. Moving the MDC impls after jquery leads to expected behaviour. Very odd.
Chas Emerick
That *is* curious! Will look at that (do you have a test case?)... I can't immediately think why this might happen, though what jQuery does on line 72 looks suspicious.
bobince
It looks like a browser cache flush fixed things up. I can't reproduce that under any circumstances now. :-)
Chas Emerick
+1  A: 

Take a look at underscore.js.

thenduks