Function name from a variable in Javascript

Question

I create a context-menu from an array like this:

var menu1 = [
   {
      'OPTION1':function(menuItem,menu) {
         // code for OPTION1
      }
   },
   {
      'OPTION2':function(menuItem,menu) {
         // code for OPTION2
      }
   }
];

When the user right-clicked on my webpage, a menu appears with the options OPTION1 and OPTION2.

I need to change dynamically the function name, because it's the context-menu option text. Is there any way to declare the function name as a variable?

This is what I want:

var optionsletters = {};
optionsletters['option1'] = 'option_one';
optionsletters['option2'] = 'option_two';

var menu1 = [
   {
      optionsletters['option1']:function(menuItem,menu) {
         // code for OPTION1
      }
   },
   {
      optionsletters['option2']:function(menuItem,menu) {
         // code for OPTION2
      }
   }
];

EDIT#1: This is the plugin I've been using jQuery ContextMenu Plugin

EDIT#2: I need this to allow change language from spanish to english and viceversa.

hugomg · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-07 20:32:31Z

1

You can't use the object literal notation to set arbritrary properties as you seem to try in the second example. This doesn't stop you from setting the property manualy:

function make_menu_item(name, func){
    var item = {};     //Create an empty object
    item[name] = func; //Assign the property with the name you choose
                       //(obj['option1'] is equivalent to obj.option1 in Javascript)
    return item;
}

var menu = [
     make_menu_item('option1', function () {...}),
     make_menu_item('option2', function () {...})]

edited Feb 7, 2011 at 20:32

answered Feb 7, 2011 at 20:25

hugomg

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Comments

duri · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-07 20:21:37Z

1

What about something like:

var name = 'option_one',
    optionsletters = {};
optionsletters[name] = function() { ... };

answered Feb 7, 2011 at 20:21

duri

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Comments

Anthony Shull · Accepted Answer · 2011-02-07 20:39:29Z

Are you asking if you can change the key from 'OPTION1' : function() {} to 'option1' : function() {} ? If so you can just copy the function to a new variable onclick. If what you're asking is to be able to call something 'option1' as a string like option1 but actually call OPTION1(){} you can try a few different things. One you could make your array like so arr[{'name' : 'option1', 'func' : function(){} }] Then you could reference array[0].name and array[0].func.

With your current code it looks like you're blowing out your functions with strings.

JS is super expressive so there are a million ways to do anything. Functions are first-class objects so can be passed as parameters and even returned from functions.

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