I’ve written a JavaScript application that runs off Prototype & Scriptaculous. I’m thinking of rolling it out in as an open source product & would like it to be able to run on jQuery as well — I typically use jQuery for most of my other apps, except the site this app was originally built for.
I was originally thinking about building two separate applications, but maintaining them would be time consuming. Instead I’m considering building a library abstraction layer that detects if the page is running jQuery or Prototype and then calls the appropriate methods. I’m not going to abstract the whole libraries, just the functionality applicable to my application — namely selectors, events & effect. The core of my app is under 500 lines of code, so there isn’t too much I need to worry about.
So instead of calling $('id') I would call LA.$('id') (LA for Library Abstraction) which would call $('id') in prototype and $('#id') in query etc…
Does this sound sane? I can’t think of any technical hurdles, although I would have expected someone to have attempted this before. I couldn’t find anything similar in my searches.
I expect that if you support the libraries only partly then no one will choose to use it, as they would have to finish the support, and you may find that maintaining it will be a headache, as there will be requests to add more functionality.
If your application is so small, why not just switch to jQuery for it, and standardize on that, as MS has done.
You may run into problems with versions, as, if someone uses it, and they are using an older version of a library, and there was some API change, then they will be wanting you to add support for that library.