This Node.js module (nwglobal) provides a workaround for node-webkit's issues #702, #716, #832.

These issues happen in node-webkit because, as the modules run in Node context, the constructors of their global objects (such as Date or ArrayBuffer or even Array) differ from WebKit's.

(An example below demonstrates that you may pass an array from some <script>…</script> to the async module that you have previously required, but that module cannot recognize such an array.)

To prevent the trouble, nwglobal exports Node's constructors. You may use them instead of the constructors available in WebKit's context, and then you may pass the resulting object instances to any Node code.

Installation

• Latest packaged version: npm install nwglobal

• Latest githubbed version: npm install https://github.com/Mithgol/nwglobal/tarball/master

You may visit https://github.com/Mithgol/nwglobal#readme occasionally to read the latest README because the package's version is not planned to grow after changes when they happen in README only. (And npm publish --force is forbidden nowadays.)

Example

Classic async waterfall example:

require('async').waterfall([
    function(callback){
        callback(null, 'one', 'two');
    },
    function(arg1, arg2, callback){
        callback(null, 'three');
    },
    function(arg1, callback){
        // arg1 now equals 'three'
        callback(null, 'done');
    }
], function (err, result) {
   // result now equals 'done'
   console.log(result);
});

does not report 'done' in node-webkit (issue #832), but can be fixed with the following changes:

require('async').waterfall( require('nwglobal').Array(
    function(callback){
        callback(null, 'one', 'two');
    },
    function(arg1, arg2, callback){
        callback(null, 'three');
    },
    function(arg1, callback){
        // arg1 now equals 'three'
        callback(null, 'done');
    }
), function (err, result) {
   // result now equals 'done'
   console.log(result);
});

The aforementioned problem was also fixed in async module version 0.3.0 (and newer versions) after its own source code was changed to take a possible difference of JavaScript contexts into account.

You may find another example in “Differences of JavaScript contexts”.

Implementation details

The following Node.js globals are available as the exported fields of require('nwglobal'):

• Standard object types: Array, Boolean, Date, Function, Number, Object, RegExp, String.

• Typed array types: ArrayBuffer, DataView, Float32Array, Float64Array, Int16Array, Int32Array, Int8Array, Uint16Array, Uint32Array, Uint8Array.

• Error types: Error, EvalError, RangeError, ReferenceError, SyntaxError, TypeError, URIError.

• Special value types: Infinity, NaN, undefined, null.

However, the latter four (Infinity, NaN, undefined, null) are actually superglobal (i.e. they are the same in Node's and WebKit's contexts). You may use nwglobal to check it with the following four statements in node-webkit's “Developer Tools” console:

• null === require('nwglobal').null

• typeof require('nwglobal').undefined === 'undefined'

• Infinity === require('nwglobal').Infinity

• isNaN( require('nwglobal').NaN )

These statements are true. (Meaning that you won't need these four exported values IRL.)

Limits

It is not possible to replace the default constructors of arrays and objects created by [] and {} initialisers.

(Standard ECMA-262 5.1 Edition very specifically defines array initialiser and object initialiser so that the corresponding standard built-in constructor is used for each.)

Therefore you have to use Array() and Object() constructors exported by require('nwglobal') in order to create arrays and objects in Node's context.

NB: you can cast browser's [] array to node.js array with require('nwglobal').Array.prototype.slice.call(browserContextArray).

NB2: With this you can transform jquery set.

License

MIT License, see the LICENSE file.