jQuery FancyBox basic concept

Question

I am still using an old version (1.3.2) of FancyBox (a lightbox) and I am trying to understand the basics of this code.

The usage is:

$(".myClass").fancybox({
    'property1' : value,        
    'property2' : value
});

And the source code is like this:

;(function($) {
    // Some declarations and code

    $.fancybox = function(obj) {

    }
    // Some code

})(jQuery);

I don't quite understand this syntax. Why does it start with a semicolon? I assume an extended method of jQuery is being created here. Maybe someone can explain or point me the way to an explanation.

Answer 1

It is a self invoking function.

Self-Invoking function is a type of function that is invoked or called automatically after its definition when followed by the parentheses set () and primarily used for the initialization tasks. This write-up demonstrated the syntax and usage of self-invoking functions in JavaScript to wrap the code inside a function scope.

Adding a semicolon at that time was considered "good practice" to avoid problems with concatenation of multiple files.