Question

I’ve been programming in Javascript for a while. Recently I made quite a huge jQuery project and applied the Module Pattern as described in this wonderful article: http://www.adequatelygood.com/2010/3/JavaScript-Module-Pattern-In-Depth

This all went fine and dandy and the code looks slick and manageable, but I felt it could be better. I’ve spend the day looking for some Javascript frameworks, mostly ones that:

• Have UI binding support
• Have a templating system
• Can work with jQuery
• Help me organize my code in a similar way as I did with the module pattern

I’ve stumbled across frameworks like AngularJS, KnockOutJS, SpineJS, JavascriptMVC, etc. The one that really sticked out – and was quite praised – was EmberJS.

I decided to give it a shot, but it has not been easy. The availability of tutorials for EmberJS is very limited. After trying for a long time I managed to get some stuff running and I like what EmberJS does! There is only one thing I can’t seem to figure out – which is also my question: How can I extend an Ember namespace (made with Ember.Application.create)?

For clarification: The old version of my project had a Core-namespace and a Util-namespace. Both contained their respective functions which all other classes could use. How can I have a Core- and Util-namespace with functions on top of the initial-namespace?

Do I just do:

MyNamespace = Ember.Application.create();
MyNamespace.Core = Ember.Application.create();
MyNamespace.Util = Ember.Application.create();

Or something else?

Answer 1

You can’t nest Ember.Namespace‘s (where Ember.Application being a subclass of Ember.Namespace), see issue #683.

Tome Dale, one of the core contributors, added an interesting answer about the layout of complex applications, see the comment.

So you can either just use App = Ember.Application.create() and create your controllers, views, etc under this namespace. Or you can – if you intend to reuse some code in other projects/applications – split the namespace’s like this:

Util = Ember.Namespace.create({
    importantNames: 'Einstein'.w()
});

Core = Ember.Namespace.create({
    sqrt: function(x) { return Math.sqrt(x); }
});

App = Ember.Application.create();

...

App.myListController = Ember.Object.create({
    importantNamesBinding: 'Core.importantNames',
    sqrtBinding: 'Util.sqrt'
});

An Ember.Application extends Ember.Namespace, and adds functionality about handling events (click, …). This stuff is useful when you write an application with views – in your Core and Util namespace you wouldn’t need that stuff, that’s why this is just an Ember.Namespace.