jQuery plugin creation and declaration for usage with $(). or $

Question

Simple idea: just have a plugin (more a basic function). That I can use with jQuery in different ways it offers, means:

var myNewVar = $.myNewFunction( myVar );
var myNewVar = $().myNewFunction( myVar );

I want to know if what I did is the good way to doesn't repeat the code, or if their is a better way to.

Here my plugin:

// New function to jquery to change an array (from form) to an object
$.formArrayToObject = function( array ) {
 var form = {};
 $(array).each(function(){
 if( !form[this.name] ) {
 form[this.name] = this.value;
 }
 else {
 if ( !Array.isArray(form[this.name]) ) {
 form[this.name] = [form[this.name]];
 }
 form[this.name].push(this.value);
 }
 });
 return form;
};
// Second declaration to be able to call both $. and $().
jQuery.fn.formArrayToObject = function() {
 $.formArrayToObject();
};

• Tancrede Chazallet: And I'm open to any other suggestion about my code if there is

Answer 1

Since your function - as far as I can tell - doesn't rely on a jQuery collection, I'd stick to always using "1 true way" of calling it.
I.e. I assume that

$("some > selector").formArrayToObject(arr) === $.formArrayToObject(arr);

that is, the two ways of calling it give the same exact result.

If that's the case, just use $.yourFunction and only that. Having two invocations that should be semantically different but actually aren't is just confusing.

For instance, jQuery doesn't have both $.ajax() and $(...).ajax() simply because the latter doesn't really make sense; the $.ajax function isn't dependent on a certain context or selector, so why would you call it as if it was?

(besides, your second declaration in the code above is broken; it ignores arguments)