Question

I am working on an open source javascript project using backbone that uses a bunch of global settings. For local development, we’d like for each developer to be able to set their own settings, but we want this to exist in a separate file so we can exclude it from the repository using .gitignore.

I come from a Django background and the convention is to have a settings.py and local_settings.py where settings.py simply does something like:

try:
    from local_settings import *
except:
    pass

Is there an equivalent javascript convention for local settings?

Answer 1

Yes, simply create a global object (or local to your namespace if you have one) containing all the settings:

var settings = {
    ...
};

Since globals are really global in JavaScript and not module-specific like in python there is no need to import anything.

If you want to extend/overwrite your settings object, you can e.g. use jQuery’s $.extend() method:

var currentSettings = $.extend(true, {}, settings, localSettings);