Question

I’ve written a js lib for my client to send commands directly to a rmi’ish server. It works nice but now I have to write a bit of server code to connect to the same server. That’s why I would like to try Node.js. However I have some difficulty’s grasping the concepts.

I would like my libraries to work on the brouwser (chrome, firefox and ie) but also be usable on Node.js, (with small motifications). That way I don’t have to maintain 2 chucks of code that are almost the same.

How ever on a brouwser system you just declare a namespace and stuff all functionality in there. In node.js I use require to load my file and stuff the variables it exports into a variable.

for example ‘./m4a.structure.js’ sets up a global m4a.structure. and ‘./m4a.cmd.js’ uses that structure to generate a butch of methods (that work as proxy’s to send stuf to the server). Finaly there is a ‘./jquery.m4a.initialize.js’ that bind the stuff to jquery to send the request out and handle the cash and stuff like that.

The first 2 files contain information that is still changing rapidly (week to week) so I would like them to remain usable on both the browser and the Node.js deamon bit. The last file off course isn’t that big and rather browser specific therefor i won’t mind (and even expect) if I can’t port that.

I hope to have been clear and that you can help me a bit.

Answer 1

The simplest way to build a module which is usable as e.g. a node.js module and in the browser is this:

var Foo = function() {
};

Foo.prototype.bar = function() {
};

if(typeof exports !== 'undefined') {
  // Node.js or similar
  exports.Foo = Foo;
} else {
  // Browser -- this is window
  this.Foo = Foo;
}