Question

Given this setup:

var ObjectNamespace   = {}
var FunctionNamespace = function FunctionNamespace() {}

ObjectNamespace.User = function() {}
FunctionNamespace.User = function User() {}

Is there anyway to write a namespace method to accomplish something like this:

ObjectNamespace.User.namespace() //=> "ObjectNamespace.User"
FunctionNamespace.User.namespace() //=> "FunctionNamespace.User"

You can get the first node by doing something like this:

ObjectNamespace.User.namespace = function() {
  return this.toString().match(/function *(\w+)/)[1]
}

ObjectNamespace.User.namespace() //=> "User"

But my question is, is there a way to reference the “parent” object, i.e. the object the User function is defined on (ObjectNamespace)? Something meta along the lines of arguments.caller.callee. That way you’d get this:

ObjectNamespace.User.namespace() //=> "ObjectNamespace.User"

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Absolutely not. Let’s assume there was, and we call it by *.parent. What would the following code do:

var apple = {}, banana = {}, lemon = {};
banana.friend = apple.friend = lemon;

lemon.parent.otherThing = 6;

console.log(apple.otherThing, banana.otherThing);

// 6, undefined?
// undefined, 6?
// 6, 6?

Who is lemon‘s parent? Both apple and banana are, but that doesn’t make sense…

Also, your idea, while good, won’t work if you call the namespace function out of context.