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I have about 600 lines of javascript that performs ajax calls, dom manipulation, test processing, and other things.

I want to make it a library that others can use.

What are the steps to doing this?

My first thought was to encapsulate the entire library in the module pattern. Someone suggested this earlier to help with a www.jshint.com issue.

But I thought it might be a good idea in general.

Should I encapsulate my entire library?

  • Should I use the module pattern?
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2 Answers 2

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Information Hiding is an old and well known way to make code safer and more modularized. Its one of the basic principles behind many awesome things like Abstract Data Types and Object Oriented Programming

(And yes, local variables and the module pattern are the only way to hide code in Javascript)

var MyModule = (function(){
    //variables in the wrapper function are local and
    // can't be seen elsewhere

    var my_var;

    function my_private_implementation_function(){ ... }

    function my_api_function(){
    }

    //return public functions
    return {
       my_api_function: my_api_function
    };
}()); //immediatelly run the module code
      //and set MyModule to the return value

//Now we can use things exported from the module

MyModule.my_api_function();

//but we can't access the prvate stuff

MyModule.my_var; //can't do this
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14 Comments

Can you recommend a simple way to do this....var my_lib = {/*all code */}, perhaps
The module pattern goes more like var Module = (function(){ ... all the code ... return an_object_containing_the_public_functions; }());
isn't that effectively just a singleton
@Esailija it depends on how you implement it. You can return an object that can be used as a constructor for many objects, or effectively return a singleton
@Esailija e.g. var NotSingleton = (funciton(){ var entity = function(){}; return entity; })(); var Singleton = (funciton(){ var entity = function(){}; return new entity; })();
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I think the way you'd encapsulate the code, how you would expose it to the DOM, interact with it or any of those things is fully dependent on the way you would want to use it and of the context in which you would use it. Coding patterns all serve their own unique purpose so pick a pattern because of what it provides to you, for instance in coding ease or performance or variable exposure. So if you'd ask me, don't use a pattern because you should use a pattern, but because it does what you want it to do best.

Besides that i would advise encapsulation (if you're talking about wrapping your code in a closure) to not clutter the global object and thus avoid variable collisions which make your code more reliable since there's less risk of bugs.

Hope it helps PM5544...

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2 Comments

would this work for starters var my_lib = {/*my code */}; to not clutter the global namespace?
That would indeed only make one blobal variable, but if you would like to keep the global vars to a absolute minimum you could wrap your code in a closure like: (function(){ // lib code here })() but that would also mean that "the outside" would have no way of getting into the scope of the closure.

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