Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

JavaScript AJAX Basics Programming AJAX Processing JSON Data

Michael Rushton
Michael Rushton
7,126 Points
Posted by Michael Rushton
Michael Rushton
7,126 Points

closing the li tags

Can't you close the li tags inside the first statusHTML parts as well as creating them?

for example

statusHTML += '<li class="out"></li>';

why do we do it after the conditional statements?

1 Answer

Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,732 Points
Steven Parker
Steven Parker
229,732 Points

If you did that, the list item would be empty instead of containing the employee name.

As shown in the video, the conditional code just creates the opening tag. The common code adds the employee name and then creates the closing tag. You wouldn't want to replicate that code in each branch of the condition when it can be done in just one place.

You could, however, replace the entire contents of the loop with an assignment using a template literal with two replacement tokens and a ternary expression for the class name:

    statusHTML += `<li class="${employees[i].inoffice?'in':'out'}">${employees[i].name}</li>`;