Simple pubsub with jQuery

Question

Is there any reason why it would be against best practice to use jQuery's trigger and on methods as a cheap and easy pubsub?

The following works:

$(document).on('my:custom:event',function(){
    alert('this is an event');
});

And later:

$(document).trigger('my:custom:event');
//=> alerts

Obviously a real jQuery pubsub plugin would be trivial to install - I'm really looking to see:

Are there any hidden caveats?
Is this acceptable to get away with in StackOverflow examples to demonstrate event-driven behavior without confusing the OP by including some plugin code?

Would be great as an answer as it address the 'caveats' section. — philwinkle, Feb 28 '14 at 22:25
The second part of your question should be asked in http://meta.stackoverflow.com (although I believe it was already asked before - so you might want to look for it). — Benjamin Gruenbaum, Feb 28 '14 at 22:28
@BenjaminGruenbaum No other answers have been posted - go ahead and leave your suggestion as an answer and I'll accept. — philwinkle, Mar 03 '14 at 16:41

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 03 '14 at 17:04

If your use case is simple enough - go right ahead:

You can use it on arbitrary objects

var obj = {};$(obj).on(...) .

Note that if you're using it on the document, you're effectively creating a global hidden dependency. Also, rolling your own pubsub for the client-side is ~20 LoC so that's another consideration since a jQuery dependency isn't something you'd always want to have.

Simple pubsub with jQuery

1 Answers1