Or, to rephrase the question, "I know how to add event handlers to an object -- how do I enumerate what's already been attached?"

And it's pretty easy, but unfortunately it doesn't use a public API. Anyway, try this in Firebug:


$("#the_button").data("events");


If there are any events on that element, they'll be displayed. The only drawback is...you have to know exactly which element the events are attached to, or guess around a bit.

Enjoy!

So here's the problem. You want something like this:

$(function(){
  $("a").click(function(){
    GM_xmlhttprequest({url: "http://www.google.com/", method: 'GET'});
  });
});

or something, right? But that doesn't work because by the time the $'s DOM ready event fired, Greasemonkey is gone. So what do you do? Well...keep Greasemonkey around, but in a limited capacity. Okay okay, here's the code:

var ajaxQueue = [];
var processAjaxQueue = function(){
  if (ajaxQueue.length > 0) {
    for (ajax in ajaxQueue) {
      var obj = ajaxQueue[ajax];
      // http://diveintogreasemonkey.org/api/gm_xmlhttprequest.html
      GM_xmlhttpRequest(obj);
    }
    ajaxQueue = [];
  }
}
setInterval(function(){
  processAjaxQueue();
}, 100);

function gmAjax(obj){
  ajaxQueue.push(obj);
}

So now you call gmAjax instead of GM_xmlhttprequest (with the same argument) and it'll get fired off within the next 100ms. Neat huh? And if you're worried about security (which you should be) -- I've tested this myself, and gmAjax isn't acccessible anywhere outside of the Greasemonkey sandbox. Huzzah, mission accomplished.

You don't have to understand it to see that it's at least a bit interesting, so check it out:

http://www.nutriscan.org/jquery_optimization/

It documents a bunch of different ways of doing similar things, and compares them in terms of performance. How much are you really losing by using the jQuery convenience method?

Relevant link.

1) "Anybody can program" book, have half of the outline for the first draft done
2) Stylometry web app, have some of the backend services done that calculate stylometry stats
a) Dictionary looker upper, reasonably complete for Merriam-Webster only
3) Blog application, just a few thoughts on paper and a few lines of code
4) Notepad, a note-keeping application, could pass for done
5) Merb Google RSS feed sample application, could pass for done
6) jQuery_merb, a javascript library bridging the gap between jQuery/javascript and merb. limited scope, but could pass for done
7) merb_solitary_part, a merb slice for hitting parts outside of "regular" requests. Needs some renaming/refactoring and some docs, but could pass for done
8 ) Kollaba, a site for finding collaborators to work on...anything. fair bit of progress on it, but probably dead.
9) merb-rails upload benchmark application, basically creating the same simple application in both versions. done enough to be used for benchmarks, at least (and yes, merb's faster).

Phew. I need to finish some stuff! But new ideas are so much more exciting...

And for once, that's a good thing, because by "done for now" I mean..."done" pending more ideas. It's thoroughly documented and tested, and I think I might just set it aside for now until I find other features it needs to interact with Merb better. Which may be never.

On the bright side, Minirequest/Solitary Part came out of it and is now living in its own repository. It's like half done, but doesn't have tests or much documentation. Also I'd like it to work with partials, which it currently doesn't handle at all. After that though, it's on to my next project...

Enter jquery_merb, or jquery.merb.js.

This library takes on a different role; rather than generating javascript for you (ew) it's meant to be a collection of helpers that assist your coding in interacting with your Merb server. For instance, if you want to use AJAX to perform CRUD operations on a resource, instead of hacking together an ajax call you can say this:

$.merb.resource.read({resources: 'notes', id: 5, dataType: 'json'})

Neat huh? The interface isn't quite as clean as it could be, but alas, that's because of the inescapable fact that resources have singular and plural forms which can't be resolved programmatically in JavaScript.

The thing I've been working on for the past couple days actually does dip into the merb side, but only just. I think it would be cool to be able to easily reload a part (using AJAX) that you use in your view, without a lot of extra work from you (no special controller methods or templates, or even writing an ajax call). This would mean something as simple as $("#my_part").merb_reload(); and the part would reload with, say, the most recent blog posts. See here for more details.

So that's what I'm working on these days...