Although I’m a C# guy, I’ve recently really started to like JavaScript. It is so dynamic and “different” that it forces you to really think what you are doing and how do you want it structured – which is a good thing. And if you just want to get things done quick and dirty JavaScript is also a perfect match for that.

When I begun to use JavaScript on daily basis I naturally soon learned to use more and more closures and all that they bring with them. For a while I wrote over and over again code like this:

whatever.success(function (data) {
  render(data, context);
});
function render(data, context) {
  $.tmpl("tmpl", data).appendTo(context);
}

Then I realized that this is not very JavaScript-like. I guess this was the moment I actually started to understand JavaScript. Since then I have more and more used the power of “this” and currying in JavaScript. Both of these materialize in bind-function, like so:

whatever.success(render.bind(context));

function render(data) {
  $.tmpl("tmpl", data).appendTo(this);
}

But opening a page with such code in IE8 brought me back to reality: out of the box bind works only on certain browsers. Luckily almost everything in JS can be fixed afterwards with polyfills and bind is no exception. Since I had some troubles finding/creating a polyfill for both bind and curry that would work on most browsers I’ll document what I’ve used below. I hope these save someone else’s time. Bind function is taken almost directly from excellent Mozilla article, and curry is derived from that.

// Function.prototype.bind polyfill from
// https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Function/bind
if (!Function.prototype.bind) {
  Function.prototype.bind = function (obj) {
    // closest thing possible to the ECMAScript 5 internal IsCallable function
    if (typeof this !== "function") {
      throw new TypeError(
        "Function.prototype.bind - what is trying to be bound is not callable"
      );
    }

    var slice = [].slice,
      args = slice.call(arguments, 1),
      self = this,
      nop = function () {},
      bound = function () {
        return self.apply(
          this instanceof nop ? this : obj || {},
          args.concat(slice.call(arguments))
        );
      };

    bound.prototype = this.prototype;

    return bound;
  };
}

if (!Function.prototype.curry) {
  Function.prototype.curry = function () {
    var slice = [].slice,
      args = slice.apply(arguments);

    return this.bind.apply(this, args.concat(slice.call(arguments)));
  };
}