jQuery UI event functionality extending

Question

I want to add functionality of auto-destroying dialog on close without adding any special code to every dialog call in the current project. So I think it needs to override the default dialog close event.

I found a way to do this (for example: How to extend a jquery ui widget ? (1.7)), but I don't want just override the event: I also need to save the previous behavior of the event and add $(this).dialog("destroy") call after it.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

I'm not 100% sure about the correctness of this, but I think you can safely override the close method like this:

$.ui.dialog.prototype._originalClose = $.ui.dialog.prototype.close;
$.ui.dialog.prototype.close = function() {
        alert ('My stuff');
        $.ui.dialog.prototype._originalClose.apply(this, arguments);
};

You can see this working at: http://jsfiddle.net/8KKMm/

However, it's normally a good idea to avoid overriding external libraries. There might be better ways to achieve your target without mangling with jQuery UI library. Please do have a look at the available events of the Dialog component: http://jqueryui.com/demos/dialog/.