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Eric Gelinas - Agile Front-End Engineer

The community JS file

March 10th, 2008

I want to share a pretty cool pattern for collaborating on JavaScript files.

A little background

In the application I am working on, we have a need to keep all of our JS in one file that is committed to subversion and included in the application. This one file is updated multiple times by members of our team and as a result needs to be frequently merged. Sure we could use includes of some sort to simplify this process but that has overhead of it's own. I am sure that a lot of teams have more then one hand in the Java Script cookie jar at a time.

The pattern

<script>
//Promoted Code
(function(){
	//Stuff
}())
//John's Code
(function(){
	//Stuff
}())
//Paul's Code
(function(){
	//Stuff
}())
</script>

What does this format offer?

• Each developer (John and Paul), will have their own closure to keep their development code. This will give them the freedom to create variables without worry of collision with other developer's code. This also will do garbage collection before running the next developer's closure.
• A "Promoted Code" closure exists to hold code that is production ready. This code will be moved from the specific developer's closure when it's development is over.
• Merging is way easier when you know where your code is in the file.
• Development code is placed after production ready code. This will allow the developers to rewrite objects in the production ready code if needed.
• Most text editors will let you collapse code blocks in a closure. This will clean up your work area and allow you to better concentrate on your code.

This pattern may seem simple but those are sometimes the best kind. I have noticed a dramatic improvement in my ability to work on these files in collaboration with other developers. garbage collection

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