{ 2007 09 14 }

JavaScript: Put everything in a namespace

Yes, everything. Put it in a namespace. Everything. No exceptions and no excuses, unless yours is “I have just been thawed.” In this case, I want to be the first to warmly welcome you to the 21st century.

Here’s a simple and reasonably OK way to do it and be nice to your friends, other libraries and the world at large:



var Article = Article ? Article : new Object();

Article.title = "Report: School Shootings Help Prepare Students For Being Shot In Real World";

Article.save = function() {

  alert("Saving " + this.title);

}

You could save a few keystrokes, though. Just use the object literal notation directly:



var Article = Article ? Article : {

  title: "Report: School Shootings Help Prepare Students For Being Shot In Real World",

  save: function() {

    alert("Saving " + this.title) 

  }

}

These two last examples are great if you’re not that concerned about exposing the ‘title’ attribute to the rest of the world. If there is a chance that problems could arise if some other piece of code changed it directly, there is a solution:



var Article = Article ? Article : function() {

  var private = {

    title: "Report: School Shootings Help Prepare Students For Being Shot In Real World"

  };



  var public = {

    getTitle: function() {

      return private.title;

    },

    

    save: function() {

      alert("Saving " + this.getTitle());

    }  

  }

  

  return public;

}();

I find this a bit hard to get used to, after so many years of developing in languages that explicitly allow me to set access control. It makes sense, though: by creating an anonymous function that returns the object I want to define, and then immediately calling it (note the ‘()’ at the last line), I can hide whatever I don’t want other parts of the code to see – it’s all tucked away in the local context of that anonymous function.

Posted by Carlos Villela on Friday, September 14th, 2007, at 4:02 pm, and filed under Geek, General.

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