Utility Methods

Prototype provides a number of “convenience” methods. Most are aliases of other Prototype methods, with the exception of the $ method, which wraps DOM nodes with additional functionality.

These utility methods all address scripting needs that are so common that their names were made as concise as can be. Hence the $-based convention.

The most commonly used utility method is without doubt $(), which is, for instance, used pervasively within Prototype's code to let you pass either element IDs or actual DOM element references just about anywhere an element argument is possible. It actually goes way beyond a simple wrapper around document.getElementById; check it out to see just how useful it is.

These methods are one of the cornerstones of efficient Prototype-based JavaScript coding. Take the time to learn them well.

Methods

$

$(id | element) -> HTMLElement
$((id | element)...) -> [HTMLElement...]

If provided with a string, returns the element in the document with matching ID; otherwise returns the passed element. Takes in an arbitrary number of arguments. All elements returned by the function are extended with Prototype DOM extensions.

$$

$$(cssRule...) -> [HTMLElement...]

Takes an arbitrary number of CSS selectors (strings) and returns a document-order array of extended DOM elements that match any of them.

$A

$A(iterable) -> actualArray

Accepts an array-like collection (anything with numeric indices) and returns its equivalent as an actual Array object. This method is a convenience alias of Array.from, but is the preferred way of casting to an Array.