Question

Some of you may or may not (probably not) know about my framework. It’s name is Ally, and I absolutely love using it.

Lately I’ve been doing a little bit of stuff in Node.js. Today I decided I was going to use it as my HTTP server, so that I could do server-side JS (in a PHP kind of way).

To do this, I started a project I’m calling Trailer . While working on it, I found myself needing one of Ally’s functions, Object:deploy. What it does is pretty much this:

var a = { a: 'a' };
a.deploy({ b: 'b' });
a.a; // 'a'
a.b; // 'b'

So I loaded it in..

var Ally = require('./Ally.js');

..but when I tried using it, it said it was undefined.

After a bit of digging I discovered that Object:deploy is defined in the Ally.js file, but the changes it makes to the global constructors don’t stay.

How do I make the changes to global variables in the Ally.js file apply to the global variables in the file that required it?

Note: Ally is linked to above if looking through the source could help, and Trailer is linked to in case anyone wants to use it when I get a usable version out.

Answer 1

Is this discussion relevant? The key points here seem to be:

1. require won’t extend global objects if you’re working in the shell

2. It also won’t work when NODE_MODULE_CONTEXTS = 1, though this doesn’t seem to be the default for a script.

So if you’re trying to run this in an interactive shell, that might be the issue. See also this SO question.