According to the jQuery Plugin Authoring page (http://docs.jquery.com/Plugins/Authoring), it’s best not to muddy up the jQuery and jQuery.fn namespaces. They suggest this method:
(function( $ ){
var methods = {
init : function(options) {
},
show : function( ) { },// IS
hide : function( ) { },// GOOD
update : function( content ) { }// !!!
};
$.fn.tooltip = function(methodOrOptions) {
if ( methods[methodOrOptions] ) {
return methods[ methodOrOptions ].apply( this, Array.prototype.slice.call( arguments, 1 ));
} else if ( typeof methodOrOptions === 'object' || ! methodOrOptions ) {
// Default to "init"
return methods.init.apply( this, arguments );
} else {
$.error( 'Method ' + methodOrOptions + ' does not exist on jQuery.tooltip' );
}
};
})( jQuery );
Basically you store your functions in an array (scoped to the wrapping function) and check for an entry if the parameter passed is a string, reverting to a default method (“init” here) if the parameter is an object (or null).
Then you can call the methods like so…
$('div').tooltip(); // calls the init method
$('div').tooltip({ // calls the init method
foo : 'bar'
});
$('div').tooltip('hide'); // calls the hide method
$('div').tooltip('update', 'This is the new tooltip content!'); // calls the update method
Javascripts “arguments” variable is an array of all the arguments passed so it works with arbitrary lengths of function parameters.