Namespacing patterns

Question

After finishing this article : Lessons From A Review Of JavaScript Code

I was wondering if my namespace

/**
 * The primary namespace object
 * @type {Object}
 * @alias BDDS
 */
if(!window['BDDS']) {
 window['BDDS'] = {};
}

if attached to the window, is this snippet invalid, according to the following?

Problem 9

Problem: The namespacing pattern used is technically invalid.

Feedback: While namespacing is implemented correctly across the rest of the application, the initial check for namespace existence is invalid. Here’s what you currently have: 1 if ( !MyNamespace ) { 2
MyNamespace = { }; 3 }

The problem is that !MyNamespace will throw a ReferenceError, because the MyNamespace variable was never declared. A better pattern would take advantage of boolean conversion with an inner variable declaration, as follows: 01 if ( !MyNamespace ) { 02 var MyNamespace = { }; 03 } 04 05 //or 06 var myNamespace = myNamespace || {}; 07 08 // Although a more efficient way of doing this is: 09 // myNamespace || ( myNamespace = {} ); 10 // jsPerf test: http://jsperf.com/conditional-assignment 11 12 //or 13 if ( typeof MyNamespace == ’undefined’ ) { 14 var MyNamespace = { }; 15 }

This could, of course, be done in numerous other ways. If you’re interested in reading about more namespacing patterns (as well as some ideas on namespace extension), I recently wrote "Essential JavaScript Namespacing Patterns." Juriy Zaytsev also has a pretty comprehensive post on namespacing patterns.

• Peter Olson: It won't throw a reference error, if that's what you mean.

Answer 1

No your code is correct.

!reference only throws a reference error if its not defined.

window is defined and window["not_defined"] just returns undefined for not defined variables.

Answer 2

I prefer a one liner but it's just a syntax thing:

window.SomeNamespace = SomeNamespace || {};