How do I declare a namespace in JavaScript?

Question

How do I create a namespace in JavaScript so that my objects and functions aren't overwritten by other same-named objects and functions? I've used the following:

if (Foo == null || typeof(Foo) != "object") { var Foo = new Object();}

Is there a more elegant or succinct way of doing this?

Answer 1

I'm 7 years late to the party, but did quite a bit of work around this 8 years ago:

• http://blogger.ziesemer.com/2008/05/javascript-namespace-function.html
• http://blogger.ziesemer.com/2007/10/respecting-javascript-global-namespace.html

It is important to be able to easily and efficiently create multiple nested namespaces to keep a complex web application organized and manageable, while respecting the JavaScript global namespace (preventing namespace pollution), and with not clobbering any existing objects in the namespace path while doing so.

From the above, this was my circa-2008 solution:

var namespace = function(name, separator, container){
  var ns = name.split(separator || '.'),
    o = container || window,
    i,
    len;
  for(i = 0, len = ns.length; i < len; i++){
    o = o[ns[i]] = o[ns[i]] || {};
  }
  return o;
};

This isn't creating a namespace, but provides a function for creating namespaces.

This can be condensed to a minified one-liner:

var namespace=function(c,f,b){var e=c.split(f||"."),g=b||window,d,a;for(d=0,a=e.length;d<a;d++){g=g[e[d]]=g[e[d]]||{}}return g};

Example of use:

namespace("com.example.namespace");
com.example.namespace.test = function(){
  alert("In namespaced function.");
};

Or, as one statement:

namespace("com.example.namespace").test = function(){
  alert("In namespaced function.");
};

Either is then executed as:

com.example.namespace.test();

If you don't need support for legacy browsers, an updated version:

const namespace = function(name, separator, container){
    var o = container || window;
    name.split(separator || '.').forEach(function(x){
        o = o[x] = o[x] || {};
    });
    return o;
};

Now, I'd be leery of exposing namespace to the global namespace itself. (Too bad the base language doesn't provide this for us!) So I'd typically use this myself in a closure, such as:

(function(){
	const namespace = function(name, separator, container){
		var o = container || window;
		name.split(separator || '.').forEach(function(x){
			o = o[x] = o[x] || {};
		});
		return o;
	};
	const ns = namespace("com.ziesemer.myApp");
	
	// Optional:
	ns.namespace = ns;
	
	// Further extend, work with ns from here...
}());

console.log("\"com\":", com);

In a larger application, this only needs to be defined once at the beginning of a page load (for client-based web apps). Additional files can then reuse the namespace function if kept (included as "optional" in the above). At worst, if this function is re-declared a few times - it's only a few lines of code, and less if minified.

Answer 2

We can use it independently in this way:

var A = A|| {};
A.B = {};

A.B = {
    itemOne: null,
    itemTwo: null,
};

A.B.itemOne = function () {
    //..
}

A.B.itemTwo = function () {
    //..
}

Answer 3

I think you all use too much code for such a simple problem. No need to make a repo for that. Here's a single line function.

namespace => namespace.split(".").reduce((last, next) => (last[next] = (last[next] || {})), window);

Try it :

// --- definition ---
const namespace = namespace => namespace.split(".").reduce((last, next) => (last[next] = (last[next] || {})), window);

// --- Use ----
let myNamespace = namespace("a.b.c");
myNamespace.MyClass = class MyClass {};

// --- see ----
console.log("a : ", a);