Better way to call superclass method in ExtJS

Question

All the ExtJS documentation and examples I have read suggest calling superclass methods like this:

MyApp.MyPanel = Ext.extend(Ext.Panel, {
  initComponent: f         


        

Answer 1

I've came up with this solution a couple hours ago heheh...

function extend (parentObj, childObj) {
    parentObj = parentObj || function () {};

    var newObj = function () {
        if (typeof this.initialize == 'function') {
            this.initialize.apply(this, arguments);
        }
    }

    newObj.prototype.__proto__ = parentObj.prototype;

    for (var property in childObj) {
        newObj.prototype[property] = childObj[property];
    }

    newObj.prototype.superclass = function (method) { 
        var callerMethod = arguments.callee.caller,
            currentProto = this.constructor.prototype.__proto__;

        while (callerMethod == currentProto[method]) {
            currentProto = currentProto.__proto__;
        } 

        return currentProto[method]; 
    };

    return newObj;
}

Then you can do:

var A = function () { 
    this.name = "A Function!";
};

A.prototype.initialize = function () {
    alert(this.name);
}

var B = extend(A, {
    initialize: function () {
        this.name = "B Function!";
        this.superclass('initialize').apply(this);
    }
});

var C = extend(B, {
    initialize: function () {
        this.superclass('initialize').apply(this);
    }
});

Tested only with (Chromium 8.0.552.237 (70801) Ubuntu 10.10) and (Firefox 3.6.13).

Hope this help someone, I was almost switching to GWT.