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To show what chaining is I'm going to use some of my own code.
This is a function I use in ajax. When an action is completed and everthing went OK, a message shows up during X time then disappears.
$("#tstme").click(function(){
notice('this is ok');
});
function notice($msg){
$(".notice").html($msg);
$(".notice").show();
$(".notice").delay(3500);
$(".notice").slideUp(300);
}
As you can see, when someone clicks on the link "tstme", function 'notice' is then executed. Here's the logic:
$(".notice").html($msg); set the text inside the div called 'notice'
$(".notice").show(); Show the div since what was initially hidden
$(".notice").delay(3500); Display this message for X amount of time
$(".notice").slideUp(300); Slideup the div
Each time I made a call to $(".notice"), jquery had to process and associate this call to each event. For a small script and few page views you won't notice. But what if your site grows?
This is where chaining comes into play. This same code could be written like this:
$("#tstme").click(function(){
notice('this is ok');
});
function notice($msg){
$(".notice").html($msg).show().delay(3500).slideUp(300);
}
Now jquery will associate several event handlers to one event. It obeys the order in which they are placed. This speeds up your code.
