Crystal Constants

A little JavaScript / CoffeeScript utility class for frozen 'constant' objects. Crystal Constants works in JavaScript environments with support for Object.defineProperty and Object.defineProperties, like Node.js and modern browsers.

Installation

The most common use of Crystal is to use it as a library. In that case, just include it in your Node.js project by adding a line for Crystal in your pacakge.json. For more information about your package.json file, you should check out the npm documentation by running npm help json.

Alternatively, you can quickly install Crystal for use in a project by running

npm install crystal_constants

which will install crystal_constants in your node_modules/ folder.

Examples

// Getting Started
// ===============
var Crystal = require('crystal').Crystal
var CONST = Crystal.create({DAYS_IN_YEAR: 365})
 
CONST.DAYS_IN_YEAR // 365
 
try {
  CONST.DAYS_IN_YEAR = 364
} catch (err) {
  // Assignment to a 'constant' property throws an error.
}
 
// You can assign new constants:
CONST.define('MONTHS_IN_YEAR', 12)
 
// Your value cannot be re-assigned:
try {
  CONST.MONTHS_IN_YEAR = 11
} catch (err) {
  // Throws an error.
}
 
// Test if a constant is already defined:
CONST.isDefined('MONTHS_IN_YEAR') // true
 
// You can assign multiple constants at once:
CONST.define({
  JAN: 31,
, FEB: 28
, MAR: 31
})
 
// Inherit on Your Own Prototypes
// ==============================
var Crystal = require('crystal').Crystal
var util = require('util')
 
function Widget(spec) {
  this.define({
    WIDTH: spec.width
  , HEIGHT: spec.height
  })
}
 
util.inherits(Widget, Crystal)
 
Widget.prototype.area = function () {
  return this.WIDTH * this.HEIGHT;
}
 
var rectangle = new Widget({width: 50, height: 100})
rectangle.area() // 5000
 
try {
  rectangle.HEIGHT = 200
} catch (err) {
  // Throws
}

# Or in CoffeeScript, for extra awesome sauce:
 
class Widget extends Crystal
  constructor: (spec) ->
    @define({
      WIDTH: spec.width
      HEIGHT: spec.height
    })
 
  area: -> @WIDTH * @HEIGHT
 
rectangle = new Widget {width: 50, height: 100}

Why?

There isn't really any way to define constants in JavaScript like there are in other languages. However, we can achieve the same thing in JavaScript with Object.defineProperty and Object.freeze. However, these techniques have a major flaw, demonstrated with this Node.js console session:

> var x = Object.create(null)
undefined
> x
{}
> Object.defineProperty(x, 'FOO', {value: 99, enumerable: true})
{ FOO: 99 }
> x.FOO
99
> x.FOO = 100
100
> x.FOO
99
> Object.freeze(x)
{ FOO: 99 }
> x.FOO = 100
100
> x.FOO
99

Bummer. Instead of throwing an error, V8 (the JavaScript engine in Node.js) just let us assign values to x.FOO even though it had already been defined and frozen. The value of x.FOO didn't change, but V8 didn't tell us that the assignments failed. That's not very useful if you need constants and expect them to behave like constants.

Testing

To run the tests, just do

./manage test

You should see the test results output.

Copyright and License

Copyright (c) 2013 by Kris Walker kris@kixx.name (http://www.kixx.name).

Unless otherwise indicated, all source code is licensed under the MIT license. See LICENSE for details.