JavaScript closure

October 31, 2008
Tagged closure, Fronteers, JavaScript

I am always having difficulties in understanding what closure does. I’ve been searching on the web for a while but not many articles helped me.

Finally I came across with 2 excellent resources which helps me a lot:

Morris Johns’ JavaScript closure for dummies
http://blog.morrisjohns.com/javascript_closures_for_dummies.html

Stuart Langridge’s secrets of JavaScript closure
http://www.kryogenix.org/code/browser/secrets-of-javascript-closures/

So according to my understanding now, closure benefits us as:

it allows callbacks or delayed functions to store the “state” (e.g. variables defined or parameters passed into the outer function) of the outer calling function when the outer function returns.
it allows us to encapsulate our data and functions. We can now define private, public and privileged methods to access objects’ internal data.

PS: Stuart Langridge’s Fronteers 2008 conference presentation video is a must watch!!

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