Note: The reason you probably don't know about it is that it's half-baked. So, please go easy on it until some smart people have a chance to look under the hood at what I'm doing. Crazy abuse will surely bring it to its knees.
I wanted to let people access the jQuery documentation via JavaScript from any other site and pull out exactly what is needed. I also wanted to play around with JSONP. This fits both of those desires.
To access the searchable API, use the following URL:
http://api.jquery.com/jsonp/
Examples
You can tap into the API with one of jQuery's Ajax methods. If you use $.get() or $.getJSON(), you'll need to append "?callback=?" to the URL. With $.get(), you'll also need to set the dataType argument to "jsonp".
Find entries in the API that have "class" in their name and then do something with them:
JAVASCRIPT :
$.get('http://api.jquery.com/jsonp/?callback=?',
{name: 'class'},
function(data) {
// do something with data
},
'jsonp');
Find all effects-category entries and then do something with them:
JAVASCRIPT :
$.getJSON('http://api.jquery.com/jsonp/?callback=?',
{category: 'effects'},
function(json) {
// do something with json
});
You can, of course, also use the low-level $.ajax() method.
Find entries with a title that ends in "ajax"; append a link for each to the document body:
JAVASCRIPT :
$.ajax({
url: 'http://api.jquery.com/jsonp/',
dataType: 'jsonp',
data: {title: 'ajax', match: 'end'},
success: function(json) {
for (var i=0, len=json.length; i', {
href: entry.url,
html: entry.title
}).appendTo('body');
}
}
});
Search Types
The JSONP API is searchable by name, category, and version. Searching by more than one criterion returns results that match all of the criteria. All searches are case-insensitive.
Search by name:
Key: title
Value: the name of any jQuery method, property, or selector
Searches in: post title and post slug
Substitutions: Before querying the database, all "$" are converted to "jQuery" and each instance of one or more spaces is converted to a hyphen ("-") for both the search values and the the post title and slug.
Default: all titles
Search by category name
Key: category
Value: category name
Substitutions: Before querying the database, each instance of one or more spaces is converted to a hyphen ("-")
Searches in: category slug
Default: all categories
Search by version number
Key: version
Value: a jQuery version number
Searches in: category slug for all categories that are a child of the main "version" category
Default: all versions
String Matching
The "match" parameter lets you be confine the results to those that match the entire search term, or just the start or end of it.
Key: match
Value: one of "start", "end", or "exact" (for search by version number, one of "end" or "exact")
Default: "anywhere", except for version number, which has a default of "start"
Returned Data
Data is returned as an array of objects. Each item in the array is an object representing a single method, property, or selector. For example, a result with one item would have the following structure:
JAVASCRIPT :
[
{
"url": "...",
"title": "...",
"type": "...", // "method", "property", or "selector"
"signatures": [
{
"added":"...",
"params": [
{
"name": "...",
"type": "...",
"optional": "...", // either "true" or an empty string
"desc": "..." // description of the parameter
}
]
}
],
"desc": "...", // short description
"longdesc": "...", // long description
"return": "..." // type of return value
}
]
Note that currently the examples/demos from each entry are not returned.
A (Fairly) Basic Demo
I put together a quick demo to give an idea of the API's flexibility. Type something into the "Name" field in the form below—say, "ajax"—and watch as the results come back. Inside the "Advanced" area, choose the "Matching... End" radio button and search again to see how the results differ.
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