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Howto: generic test to see if widgets call this.inherited succesfully?

I maintain a custom library consisting of many dijit widgets at the company I work at.
Many of the defects/bugs I have had to deal with were the result of this.inherited(arguments) calls missing from overriden methods such as destroy startup and postCreate.
Some of these go unnoticed easily and are not always discovered until much later.
I suspect I can use dojo\aspect.after to hook onto the 'base' implementation, but I am not sure how to acquire a handle to the _widgetBase method itself.
Merely using .after on the method of my own widget would be pointless, since that wouldn't check whether this.inherited(..) was inded called.
How can I write a generic test function that can be passed any dijit/_WidgetBase instance and checks whether the _widgetBase's methods mentioned above are called from the widget when the same method is called on the subclassing widget itself?
Bottom-line is how do I acquire a reference to the base-implementation of the functions mentioned above?

After reading through dojo's documentation, declare.js code, debugging, googling, debugging and hacking I end up with this piece of code to acquire a handle to a base method of the last inherited class/mix-in, but I am not entirely happy with the hackiness involved in calling getInherited:
Edit 2 I substituted the second param of getInherited with an empty array. While I actually get a reference to the method of the baseclass using aspect doesn't work. It appears this approach is a bust.
require(['dijit/registry','dojo/_base/declare','mycompany/widgets/widgetToTest'],
function(registry,declare,widgetToTest)
{
var widget = registry.byId('widgetToTestId');
var baseStartup = getBaseMethod(widget,'startup');
function getBaseMethod(widget,methodName){
return widget.getInherited(methodName,[]);
}
//This is the method body I want to use .after on to see if it was called, it returns the last overriden class in the array of inherited classes. (a mixin in this case, good enough for me!)
alert(baseStartup);
});

I have given up trying to use dojo/aspect.
I have instead opted to modify the code of our custom base widget to incorporate snippets such as the one below. They are automatically removed when creating a release-build in which console-calls and their content are removed:
console.log(
function(){
(this._debugInfo = this._debugInfo|| {}).postCreate=true;
}.call(this)
);
A simple method in boilerplate code I added near the unittests is available so that I can call it on all mycompany.widgets.basewidget instances in their respective unittests.

JavaScript: how to pass object value from one function to another

I am using code lines like the following in order to fetch data from an intranet website:
util.setProp(obj, "firstNameOld", $(msg).find('#fname_a').text());
Now I have another function in the same file where I want to use the above again, resp. the value of that object - currently I am hard-coding this ('Test') for test purposes:
util.setProp(obj, "firstNameNew", 'Test');
How can I pass the value from the firstNameOld object in one function to the firstNameNew object in another function ? If a solution with global variables is better here than this would work as well.
Many thanks for any help with this, Tim.

I've never used the framework that includes util But I imagine that if there is a setProp() then there has to be a getProp() or something similar.
If so, you could do something like
util.setProp(obj, "firstNameNew", util.getProp(obj, "firstNameOld"));
This also relies on the assumption that you want to copy from two properties in the same object.
If not, then pass the desired source object in the getProp() call.

My guess is that functions (or properties) are called "firstNameOld" and "firstNameNew", so the first time you get it from selector, second time you want to do the same.
Try to use the local variable like that:
var text = $(msg).find('#fname_a').text();
//
util.setProp(obj, "firstNameOld", text);
//
util.setProp(obj, "firstNameNew", text);

Function object in JavaScript

I think the Function object is the only instance in the JavaScript. All the other function(){...} or var xx=function(){...} are the objects inherited from this Function object. That is the prototype based language feature. And in prototype based language there is no Class, and One of the advantages of it is the object can changed anytimes.such as add a method or add a property into it. So, I think we can treat object like a key-values collection. You can add items into it anytimes after you created it. (If I was wrong, Please correct me.)
Say you have the code:
Function.test=function(){
alert(Function.name);//"Function"
alert(Function.myName);//"fun"
};
Function.name="fun";
Function.myName="fun";
Function.test();
In the above code, all I want to do is add a test method to the Function object.
There is no error found in this code. But why Function.name can not be changed?

First of all this property is not standard. This means that different browsers may treat it as they want. The second thing is that according to MDN it is read only.

A page from MDN states that the name of the Function cannot be changed because it's read only.

Javascript creating references to native functions

I have written this code (this is a snippet) that doesn't seem to be working. I have isolated it to here.
grab = window.document.getElementById;
grab("blueBox") // i.e. grab("blueBox").onclick [...]
Is it possible to create references to native function in javascript. I am doing something with the grabbed element, I just left it out for example. The grab function doesn't seem to work.
I am using FireFox's most recent version

The way you're doing it will mess up the assignment of the this value for the function.
grab = window.document.getElementById;
grab("blueBox") // i.e. grab("blueBox").onclick [...]
here this will be the global object. Try:
grab.apply(window.document, ["blueBox"])
or in newer browsers:
grab = window.document.getElementById.bind(window.document);
to get directly define what this will be.

The first step here is always the JavaScript console. Firebug is your friend. Tell us the error message if it doesn't mean anything to you.
In the mean time, here is a workaround:
var grab = function(id) { return window.document.getElementById(id); }

function grab(id) {
return window.document.getElementById(id);
}
grab("blueBox");

The reason is because the function getElementById is not being called as a method of document, so its this keyword doesn't reference the right object. Using call as suggested in other answers shows that when this references the document, getElementById works.

What is a reverse reference to the DOM object?

In this link: http://css-tricks.com/snippets/jquery/jquery-plugin-template/ it has a line of code that says
// Add a reverse reference to the DOM object
base.$el.data("yourPluginName", base);
what does the "reverse reference to the DOM object" mean?

Assuming that you know the jQuery data function:
It's storing a reference to the instance of the class in the data cache of jQuery, meaning that the stored instance can be used to access the initial base object if it in the current context is not available.
This way, the class instance can be used later. However, the use of the prototype keyword upon the initial class that the instance were created from will modify the instance.
EDIT:
Ooops, it seems that Anurag is right, and I was giving wrong information.
Sorry, the information I gave in initial answer was not completely correct. I've updated the answer, so it now tells the truth.
In the comments you're asking:
so you mean its storing the current state of "base" in the data cache but if we make changes to "base" later on then the one in the data wont be affected? so if for some reason we needed to get the original one again we can do data('yourPluginName') to retrieve it? can you give me an example of when this would be helpful?
It seems that none of the statements are correct.
As I did obviously not remember adequately, the thing stored in data is only a reference to the object:
var obj = {};
obj.hello = "Hello";
$("#someElement").data("object", obj);
obj.world = " world.";
alert(
obj.hello +
$("#someElement").data("object").world
); // alerts "Hello world."
BTW, JavaScript variables with names like this base-thing (but, more often seen as that or similar) are typically used to represent the current context, accessed through the this keyword, which on many occasions is more easy to store in another variable due to scoping/context changes, that will make the current context and therefore this, change.
Also due to issues with context, the stored value in data could be used to access the specific object instance from another context (that is, when this represents something else), instead of the version of the base object that was continually used after a copy of it was stored.
I hope this answered you questions :D

The technique and the problem it solves is general and not specific to jQuery plugins. There may be cases where a Javascript object corresponds to a DOM element, and wraps logic specific to that DOM element. This object might be interested in listening to events such as clicks that happen within that DOM element. The information we get in those callbacks is the element that triggered it, and not the associated object. You could use jQuery's data API or any type of map in general to retrieve the corresponding object, and do something with it.