Question

I’ve sort if fell into this organization of javascript and was wondering if I’m missing the point somewhere here, or if there’s a more elegant way of doing this.

Basically I’m wrapping everything in a function (object) and then setting up methods on that object, then instantiating an instance of the wrapper object and passing in any options and dependencies.

I have a hunch there’s a way to automatically run .init() and a few other tweaks that could be made. Am I doing it right?

function AppModuleCore(){

    var AppModuleCore = this; //keep internals sane

    // Various global vars, objects
    AppModuleCore.defaultOptions = {};

    AppModuleCore.init = function(opts) {

        // todo: that thing where you extend an options object a la juery

        AppModuleCore.bindEvents();

    };

    AppModuleCore.bindEvents = function() {

        // bind events here, send to functions within AppModuleCore.<FUNCTIONNAME>();

        // Example:
        $("a#clicker").unbind("click");
        $("a#clicker").click(function(event){

            AppModuleCore.handleClickerClick(event);

        });

    };

    AppModuleCore.handleClickerClick = function(event){

        alert("clicker was clicked");

    };

}

// --------------------------------------------------------------------
// instantiate AppModuleCore object and initialize with opts, 
// dependency injection
// --------------------------------------------------------------------
$(document).ready(function(){
    AppModuleCore = new AppModuleCore;

    var options = {};
    AppModuleCore.init(options);

});

Answer 1

OK, some points
Having your code wrapped in a constructor only really makes sense if

1. You’re going to instantiate more than one
2. You have “public” methods on the object that you are going to call

Your code doesn’t exhibit these characteristics. I say this because your jQuery selectors a#clicker are hard coded so I’m assuming that you wouldn’t want to bind the same events to them more than once?

You’d be better off using a function (perhaps your init) or an object literal to limit your scope..

function init( options ) {

    var defaultsOptions = {};    
    var privateVar = 'only in this scope';

    //extend your default options with options here
    //using jquery
    options = $.extend( defaultOptions, options );

    // this function is completely private to this scope
    function privatefunction() {
        //do stuff
    }

    function handleClickerClick( event ){
        alert("clicker was clicked");
    }

    // you don't need to wrap your handler in an anonymous function unless
    // you're doing some work to the event before forwarding:- just give a 
    // reference to your handler
    // the handler has access to other members of this scope, we're in a closure
    $(options.selector).click( handleClickerClick );

    //etc

}

init( {selector: 'a#clicker'} );

On a stylistic note: when you alias this with the same name as the constructor and then add methods to the alias, it looks at first glance like you are adding static methods to the constructor. This may be confusing to someone who looks at your code later and doesn’t notice the alias.

function C() {

    // a static method i.e a property of the constructor, C not objects created with it
    // it is a bit wierd that it is defined in the constructor but not unheard of
    C.staticMethod = function(){};

    //quite plainly a method of objects of this type, easy to understand
    this.method = function(){};

}