Following code is tested with jQuery 1.3 .

I have following code which depends on jQuery.

var Search = {
		initAction: function($elm) {
			if ($elm.attr('value').length === 0) {
				$elm.attr('value', 'search');
			}
		},

		blurAction: function($elm) {
			if ($elm.attr('value') === 'search') {
				$elm.attr('value', '');
			}
		}

};

Search.initAction($('#query_term_input'));
Search.blurAction($('#query_term_input'));

Everything is cool.

Next, company decides to use a cool JavaScript widget that depends on Prototype library. After adding the Prototype library my code starts failing. I have been asked to fix my code.

I can obviously go through the code and do a mass find $ and replace $ with jQuery. This is error prone.

A better solution would be to make use of self invoking function and redefine $ to jQuery.

var Search = (function($) {
	return {
		initAction: function($elm) {
			if ($elm.attr('value').length === 0) {
				$elm.attr('value', 'search');
			}
		},

		blurAction: function($elm) {
			if ($elm.attr('value') === 'search') {
				$elm.attr('value', '');
			}
		}

	}; // return
})(jQuery);

Search.initAction(jQuery('#query_term_input'));
Search.blurAction(jQuery('#query_term_input'));