In today’s post, I wish to discuss functions. Functions are one of the foundations of JavaScript. If you come from other language backgrounds, such as C# or Java, you might be familiar with the term ‘methods’. Functions equal methods (pretty much). Functions are great. They allow us to modularize our code, stick to Object Oriented Principles (OOP), such as the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP)…and just plain make programming easier to do. So instead of having a huge ‘super function’ that would be difficult to maintain and debug, we can have several smaller ones accomplish the same task(s).
Another way to think of functions is like a ‘black box’. We call functions in our code, they perform their magic and give us what we need back. Think of it kind of like a drive thru at a fast food restaurant. You pull up to the speaker, give them your order. They get to work inside putting together your order. You do not see what steps they go through to build your order, nor do you probably want to do so. You simply drive around to the window and they give you what you needed.
There are many, many uses and ways to build functions, but the basic function structure is as follows…
[code lang=”js”]
function myFunctionName() {
// Do some cool code stuff in here
}
[/code]
So you utilize the function keyword, then name your function so you can reference it elsewhere in your code. Then you build the ‘guts’ of the function for it to do its work.
Happy Coding!
Clay Hess
