Question

I’d like to use namespaces as one would in javascript by using the keyword “with”, but CoffeeScript reports this as a reserved keyword and refuses to compile is there any way I could use namespaces in cs?

In particular, I want to include a CoffeeScript file dynamically (trusted source), like loading models for a database schema, but I want the included script to have access to a local namespace.

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Edit:

Here’s what I want to do. I am setting up a web framework that maps the directory tree to an application based on express and mongoose. For example, there’s a sub-directory ‘models’ that contains a file ‘user.coffee’ with code like this inside:

name:
    type: String
    unique: on
profiles: [ Profile ]

Whereby Profile is a class that sits in a local object named model. When the user model is being loaded, I wanted it to access the model classes that sit in my local model store.

My work-around for now was to write model.Profile into the file ‘user.coffee’. Hope it is clear what I mean.

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2nd Edit

Here’s how I did it without using with:

user.coffee

name:
    type: String
    unique: on
profiles: [ @profile ]

profile.coffee

content: String

And here’s how it’s dynamically loaded:

for fm in fs.readdirSync "#{base}/models"
    m = path.basename fm, '.coffee'
    schema[m] = (()->
        new Schema coffee.eval (
            fs.readFileSync "#{base}/models/#{fm}", 'utf8'
        ), bare: on
    ).call model
    mongoose.model m, schema[m]
    model[m] = mongoose.model m

Seems an okay solution to me.

Answer 1

The Coco fork of CoffeeScript supports a with syntax; see https://github.com/satyr/coco/wiki/additions. However, that syntax simply sets the value of this to the target object in a block, rather than compiling to the problematic and deprecated with keyword.

Let’s say that you wanted to emulate Coco’s with syntax in CoffeeScript. You’d do something like this:

withObj = (obj, func) -> func.call obj

Then you could write

withObj = (obj, func) -> func.call obj
withObj annoyingly.lengthy.obj.reference, ->
  @foo = 'bar'
  @bar = 'baz'

Of course, in such simple cases, it’s better to use a utility function like jQuery or Underscore’s extend:

_.extend annoyingly.lengthy.obj.reference, foo: 'bar', bar: 'baz'