Not writing the same js over and over again

I was doing a bunch of rjs stuff in rails, and lots of ajax goodness, and found myself constantly showing, and hiding the spinner and the update element (like a submit button, or other button)..

I’m a bit of a minimalist where possible and like to get rid of as much code as I can, and being as DRY as I can, and so I decided to make the following function:

1. function updating_field(field_name, finished) {
2. if (finished) {
3. $(‘spinner‘).hide();
4. $(‘update_‘ + field_name).show();
5. } else {
6. $(‘spinner‘).show();
7. $(‘update_‘ + field_name).hide();
8. }
9. }

I simply call this method from the onclick method, or sumbit method of elements on the page and it tidies up my code considerably.

1. <input type="submit" value="Save these changes" id="update_avatars2" onclick = "updating_avatars(false);" />

I can then call this code over and over again… In fact, I do, and I have many other helpers similar to this – which I’ll explore in other blog posts.