globalise

Okay so firstly lets just get this out of the way, I am a PHP dev and I am by no means a javascript expert. However I am having a play with node.js for the first time... so please be gentle :)

To make my life more pleasurable in node I have created this module that basically globalises everything, in effect providing autoloading like I am used to in PHP. I hated having all these require statements everywhere.

Feel free to send through as many death threats as you like but my new haraka based mail server will filter them out... hahaha

How To Use

1. npm install globalise

2. In your main.js:
   require('globalise');

3. Now everything is global, you can call up say
   a path function without having to actually require path.

   console.log(path.resolve('./'));

   It just works!

Okay so thats pretty neat, did I also mention we will autoload all your installed modules but only from your applications node_modules folder. Not from the global modules and we only go one level deep.

What Else Do You Get

So as if that wasn't enough I also include the node module "classical" for you. You can check out it's docs for what it's all about: https://npmjs.org/package/classical

We add on top of this and create a Namespace function. Again this is Global.

You can use it like so:

./lib/brads/cool/namespace/foo.js - contains
Namespace('brads.cool.namespace.foo', function(){ console.log('foo'); });

./main.js - contains
require('globalise');
require('./lib/brads/cool/namespace/foo.js');
brads.cool.namespace.foo();

But this isn't autoloaded at the moment, to do this you need to tell us where your "lib" folder is that contains your javascript classes and functions all nicely namespaced similar to what you might find in a PHP project. Okay and now for the autoloading part, same example as above:

./lib/brads/cool/namespace/foo.js - contains
Namespace('brads.cool.namespace.foo', function(){ console.log('foo'); });

./main.js - contains
require('globalise');
globalise.autoload('./lib');
brads.cool.namespace.foo();

globalise.autoload is syncronous

Yay no more requires ever again!!!

Creating Your Own Framework as a Node Module

So you actully think this is really cool (if you do your probably another PHP dev like me). You have written your own classes and so fourth which is also really cool and now you are thinking you would like to wrap up your framework into a node module and publish it with npm so others can install it easily with npm.

This is how I suggest you do it:

1. Create a index.js file and place the following:
require('globalise');
globalise.autoload(__dirname+'/lib');

2. Get your classes and so fourth and put them inside the lib folder.

3. Create a package.json file that lists globalise and any other modules
   that your OOP framework depends on.

4. Publish your package with npm

5. User comes along and installs your module with NPM, they will get
globalise obviously. And because globalise is well global they can also use
globalise.autoload() if they want to.

The Fine Print

I'll admit this probably has far reaching implications that I am unaware of just yet. But it does seem to be working for me just fine and dandy for the time being. I take no responsibility for the "security" or "performance" implications this may or may not have on your application.