beginner: changing map extent on click

Question

I want the map extent to change by clicking on some text. I'm using the example Add Dynamic Map and I have added the following codefunction myzoom() { var axtent = new esri.geometry.Extent(55.6153456, 5.7191691, 105.6673614, 37.0016790, map.SpatialReference); map.setExtent(axtent); } I have tried placing it both outside of the init function and inside the init function. In both cases I get an error when I call it

click for zoom

If I add an alert function outside of the init function function nTest(){ alert("test2"); } and call it from here

click for alert

it works. Why? - Mike

MikeOnzay · Answer

Thanks for your help and clear explanations.

derekswingley1 · Answer

I prefer to use dojo.connect() to wire up events as it keeps JavaScript separate from HTML. I do not like to embed JS in my markup. Separation of concerns and all that...

For the first argument to dojo.connect, I prefer using dojo.byId() because it's explicit what is happening. It's perfectly reasonable to just use a string that corresponds to a DOM node's ID.

MikeOnzay · Answer

Thanks for posting the complete code from the other post.

I caught that case sensitivity after I published my original post.

When I fixed my function name problem I still got an error that myZoom was not defined. I see from your example that while I placed my function in the head section I did not tie it together with dojo.connect.

I found that it in the dojo.connect that you can use either
dojo.byId('button2') or just button2 in the dojo.connect statement. Is this a matter of preference or is there a reason why you were more specific?

The reason why I coded the way I did was because I had looked at this example  and I saw that there was an onChange event in the combobox. It calls a function which changes the map based on a layer definition. So I thought it would be okay to do something similar with an onClick event.

Why does this example not use a dojo.connect statement to tie it together as you showed in my original example?