Question

I have the following code. It’s a JavaScript module.

(function() {

   // Object
   var Cahootsy;

   Cahootsy = {
       hello: function () {
           alert('test');
       },
    };

    (Cahootsy.scope = (function() {
        return this;
     })()).Cahootsy = Cahootsy;

    return Cahootsy;

}).call(this);

I don’t understand the section:

    (Cahootsy.scope = (function() {
        return this;
     })()).Cahootsy = Cahootsy;

I think it is creating an object referencing ‘this’ module and then assigns the Cahootsy variable to a global Cahootsy variable. What I don’t understand is why ‘this’ needs to be assigned to Cahootsy.scope

Answer 1

You can break it down a little, like so:

var getScope = function() {return this;}
Cahootsy.scope = getScope();
getScope().Cahootsy = Cahootsy;

What it does is gets the global scope (usually window, but not always). Then it creates a link from Cahootsy to the global scope via the object’s scope property, and a link the other way via the scope’s Cahoosty property.

The result is that, in a browser, you would get window.Cahootsy is the object, and window.Cahootsy.scope goes back to the window.