Good catch and thanks for the link. I’ve updated the last example.

This is why I should not write blog articles in the middle of the night ^_^.

I have a couple of points. First the assignment:

object_mes_namespace(’Widget.ImagePopout’) = function(bd, src, emap) {
//…
};

Doesn’t work as the left-hand side of the assignment is an expression. Did you mean:

object_mes_namespace(’Widget’).ImagePopout = function(bd, src, emap) {
//…
};

Secondly, I’ve written a somewhat long entry about namespacing. It allows for more general form of namespace declarations, and it has a complementary function ‘using’ which neatly brings a namespace into scope. Let me know what you think.

/Karl

My initial thoughts were exactly that. You can modify the method by adding the following after name = tok[j]:

if (o[name] && j === tok.length - 1) {
throw(”Your Exception Here”);
}

However, after playing with the function a bit, I found myself most often using it at the beginning of a JavaScript file to ensure that the namespace I wanted to attach the new object to existed. So, if I wanted to attach a ‘Dom’ in one file and an ‘Event’ package in another file to ‘Core.Util’, then I called my function with ‘Core.Util’, in both files.

I think sometimes you don’t want to throw an error, if the namespace exists, as with ‘Core.Util’, but other you do. For example if I called the namespace function for ‘Core.Util.Event’, as I would be overriding the event object.

You could therefore, pass in as the last object to the namespace function a boolean, ‘throwErrorOnExistance’, which would equal:

throwErrorOnExistance = isType(a[a.length-1], ‘boolean’) && a[a.length-1];

and modify the error if statement to be:

if (throwErrorOnExistance && o[name] && j === tok.length - 1) {
throw(”Your Exception Here”);
}

I don’t like how it returns the namespace object. This allows me to write code like object_mes_namespace( “x” ) = 3; Which to me is the equivalent of x = 3; So even if x had existed before, it doesn’t really matter, since it exists after the initialization anyway. There’s more code to create a simple assignment.

I understand the problem that arises, if say I want to access x.attr and x is undefined. This function ensures that x exists. I also understand that this function allows you to create objects in a succinct style. I think that this function would be more useful, though, if when you come across a collision there is some sort of warning or error that occurs.

I think this might be just an error, but shouldn’t the o object be assigned back to the window object every time you iterate through the functions arguments? Also, if try to build on top of an attribute that’s a literal and not an object, this function fails. Ex. x = 3; object_mes_namespace( “x.attr” ); Should fail.