I\'m trying to define the global
object in JavaScript in a single line as follows:
var global = this.global || this;
The above
After reading Esailija and Raynos' answers I understood that my code this.global || this
will not work for all cases in node.js; and that it may even fail in browsers if a variable called global
already exists in the global scope.
Esailija pointed out that this.global
is not really the global
object, stating instead that this
is the global
object in RingoJS; and although I understand his arguments, for my purposes I require this.global
and not this
.
Raynos suggested that I hard code feature detection for every CommonJS environment. However since I'm currently only supporting RingoJS and node.js, I only need to test for global
and window
. Hence I decided to stick with this.global || this
.
Nevertheless, as I said before this.global || this
doesn't work for all cases in node.js as I understood from benvie's comments. In the node.js REPL I realized that I require this
and not this.global
. However, this.global || this
expresses this.global
. In a node.js module I require this.global
and not this
. However, it expresses this
since this.global
is undefined
. Hence to solve this problem I finally decided to use the following code:
(function (global) {
// javascript framework
})(typeof global !== "undefined" && global || this);
The reason I'm using this code is because in node.js modules this.global
is undefined
. Hence we must use global
directly. Thus we use typeof global !== "undefined" && global
to get the global
object in both RingoJS and node.js; and we use this
as the global
object in browsers (window
) and as a default fallback.
Note: I didn't provide any logic for finding the global
object in the node.js REPL because I don't believe that my framework will be used directly within the REPL anyway. However, writing the logic to find it should be fairly trivial once one understands the complications of finding the global
object in node.js as benvie pointed out. I know that I don't.