ServerJS/Modules
< ServerJS
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
This page is being ported from [[1]]
Modules
To date, client side JavaScript has generally been able to get away with something as simple as the <script> tag and no standard way to do namespaces. On the server, it's a bit different because you're more likely to use more libraries and you can potentially load up a lot of code. Having a basic system for loading code and encouraging the use of namespaces to avoid unintentional interference will underlie everything else.
Prior Art
- Spidermonkey (and Jaxer) and Rhino offer a load function, but does not have any specific pattern for namespacing.
- Dojo has a complete incremental loading facility in the form of dojo.require and a standard mechanism for declaring modules. dojo.require ensures that the module is loaded only once. It also manages dependecies between modules.
- The Jack project implements a simple "require" system.
- Persevere uses "require" (similar to Jack) for module loading.
- Helma NG implements a module system with per-module scopes and import, include and require functions.
- jslibs bootstrapping jshost provides only basic code and loading module support, direct from file and either into the global namespace or a chosen namespace http://code.google.com/p/jslibs/wiki/jshost
- Advanced JavaScript Importing & Loading Extension is the browser-independent extension that provides Javascript with namespace and dynamic script loading support ( http://ajile.iskitz.com/ )
- modulesjs an XHR JS module loader provides module loading, singleton modules ( http://modulesjs.com/ )
- Synchronet provides a global load() method which allows a specified scope/sandbox object, passing arguments, and background/concurrent execution: http://synchro.net/docs/jsobjs.html#global
- Ejscript has a loadable module mechanism based on language extensions "module" and "use module" definitions. Modules can have scope, dependencies, incremental loading and optional backing native code.
- Torino implements a C-style "#include" preprocessor which is intended to provide a low-level loading mechanism on top of which more sophisticated module management schemes can be implemented in JavaScript.
Proposals
Several proposals have been made: