Question

I have a class written in coffeescript, e.g.,

class Example
  constructor: ->
    $.each [1, 2, 3], (key, value) =>
      @test = value
    return @test
  render: ->
    alert @test

and I have this class as a separate file, Example.coffee

Now I want to be able to instantiate in my main javascript file like so:

d = new Example
d.render()

but the class is undefined even when it is included as a script on the page, like

<script src="Example.js></script>
<script src="main.js"></script>

How do you make the class publicly available to the main file?

Answer 1

You can declare your class to be globally accessible (at least for browsers) by declaring it to be in the window namespace:

class window.Example
  constructor: ->
    $.each [1, 2, 3], (key, value) =>
      @test = value
    return @test
  render: ->
    alert @test

That will put Example straight into window. You can also say class @Example in most cases.

By default, CoffeeScript wraps each file in a (function() { ... })() wrapper to prevent namespace pollution. You can prevent this by supplying -b when compiling your CoffeeScript:

-b, --bare
Compile the JavaScript without the top-level function safety wrapper.

but that might not be an option for you (or it might be an ugly one). The usual approach is to declare an application specific namespace somewhere before your classes are loaded:

// Probably in a <script> in your top-level HTML...
App = { };

and then namespace your classes appropriately:

class App.Example
    #...

Then refer to everything through the App namespace.