Learning JavaScript Design Patterns The Module Pattern

The Module Pattern

Modules

Modules are an integral piece of any robust application's architecture and typically help in keeping the units of code for a project both cleanly separated and organized.

In JavaScript, there are several options for implementing modules. These include:

• The Module pattern
• Object literal notation
• AMD modules
• CommonJS modules
• ECMAScript Harmony modules

We will be exploring the latter three of these options later on in the book in the section Modern Modular JavaScript Design Patterns.

The Module pattern is based in part on object literals and so it makes sense to refresh our knowledge of them first.

Object Literals

In object literal notation, an object is described as a set of comma-separated name/value pairs enclosed in curly braces ({}). Names inside the object may be either strings or identifiers that are followed by a colon. There should be no comma used after the final name/value pair in the object as this may result in errors.

var myObjectLiteral = {
 
    variableKey: variableValue,
 
    functionKey: function () {
      // ...
    }
};

Object literals don't require instantiation using the new operator but shouldn't be used at the start of a statement as the opening { may be interpreted as the beginning of a block. Outside of an object, new members may be added to it using assignment as follows myModule.property = "someValue";

Below we can see a more complete example of a module defined using object literal notation:

var myModule = {
 
  myProperty: "someValue",
 
  // object literals can contain properties and methods.
  // e.g we can define a further object for module configuration:
  myConfig: {
    useCaching: true,
    language: "en"
  },
 
  // a very basic method
  saySomething: function () {
    console.log( "Where in the world is Paul Irish today?" );
  },
 
  // output a value based on the current configuration
  reportMyConfig: function () {
    console.log( "Caching is: " + ( this.myConfig.useCaching  ? "enabled" : "disabled") );
  },
 
  // override the current configuration
  updateMyConfig: function( newConfig ) {
 
    if ( typeof newConfig === "object" ) {
      this.myConfig = newConfig;
      console.log( this.myConfig.language );
    }
  }
};
 
// Outputs: Where in the world is Paul Irish today?
myModule.saySomething();
 
// Outputs: Caching is: enabled
myModule.reportMyConfig();
 
// Outputs: fr
myModule.updateMyConfig({
  language: "fr",
  useCaching: false
});
 
// Outputs: Caching is: disabled
myModule.reportMyConfig();

Using object literals can assist in encapsulating and organizing your code and Rebecca Murphey has previously written about this topic in depth should you wish to read into object literals further.

That said, if we're opting for this technique, we may be equally as interested in the Module pattern. It still uses object literals but only as the return value from a scoping function.

The Module Pattern

The Module pattern was originally defined as a way to provide both private and public encapsulation for classes in conventional software engineering.

In JavaScript, the Module pattern is used to further emulate the concept of classes in such a way that we're able to include both public/private methods and variables inside a single object, thus shielding particular parts from the global scope. What this results in is a reduction in the likelihood of our function names conflicting with other functions defined in additional scripts on the page.

Privacy

The Module pattern encapsulates "privacy", state and organization using closures. It provides a way of wrapping a mix of public and private methods and variables, protecting pieces from leaking into the global scope and accidentally colliding with another developer's interface. With this pattern, only a public API is returned, keeping everything else within the closure private.

This gives us a clean solution for shielding logic doing the heavy lifting whilst only exposing an interface we wish other parts of our application to use. The pattern is quite similar to an immediately-invoked functional expression (IIFE - see the section on namespacing patterns for more on this) except that an object is returned rather than a function.

It should be noted that there isn't really an explicitly true sense of "privacy" inside JavaScript because unlike some traditional languages, it doesn't have access modifiers. Variables can't technically be declared as being public nor private and so we use function scope to simulate this concept. Within the Module pattern, variables or methods declared are only available inside the module itself thanks to closure. Variables or methods defined within the returning object however are available to everyone.

History

From a historical perspective, the Module pattern was originally developed by a number of people including Richard Cornford in 2003. It was later popularized by Douglas Crockford in his lectures. Another piece of trivia is that if you've ever played with Yahoo's YUI library, some of its features may appear quite familiar and the reason for this is that the Module pattern was a strong influence for YUI when creating their components.

Examples

Let's begin looking at an implementation of the Module pattern by creating a module which is self-contained.

var testModule = (function () {
 
  var counter = 0;
 
  return {
 
    incrementCounter: function () {
      return counter++;
    },
 
    resetCounter: function () {
      console.log( "counter value prior to reset: " + counter );
      counter = 0;
    }
  };
 
})();
 
// Usage:
 
// Increment our counter
testModule.incrementCounter();
 
// Check the counter value and reset
// Outputs: counter value prior to reset: 1
testModule.resetCounter();

Here, other parts of the code are unable to directly read the value of our incrementCounter() orresetCounter(). The counter variable is actually fully shielded from our global scope so it acts just like a private variable would - its existence is limited to within the module's closure so that the only code able to access its scope are our two functions. Our methods are effectively namespaced so in the test section of our code, we need to prefix any calls with the name of the module (e.g. "testModule").

When working with the Module pattern, we may find it useful to define a simple template that we use for getting started with it. Here's one that covers namespacing, public and private variables:

var myNamespace = (function () {
 
  var myPrivateVar, myPrivateMethod;
 
  // A private counter variable
  myPrivateVar = 0;
 
  // A private function which logs any arguments
  myPrivateMethod = function( foo ) {
      console.log( foo );
  };
 
  return {
 
    // A public variable
    myPublicVar: "foo",
 
    // A public function utilizing privates
    myPublicFunction: function( bar ) {
 
      // Increment our private counter
      myPrivateVar++;
 
      // Call our private method using bar
      myPrivateMethod( bar );
 
    }
  };
 
})();

Looking at another example, below we can see a shopping basket implemented using this pattern. The module itself is completely self-contained in a global variable called basketModule. The basket array in the module is kept private and so other parts of our application are unable to directly read it. It only exists with the module's closure and so the only methods able to access it are those with access to its scope (ie. addItem(), getItemCount() etc).

var basketModule = (function () {
 
  // privates
 
  var basket = [];
 
  function doSomethingPrivate() {
    //...
  }
 
  function doSomethingElsePrivate() {
    //...
  }
 
  // Return an object exposed to the public
  return {
 
    // Add items to our basket
    addItem: function( values ) {
      basket.push(values);
    },
 
    // Get the count of items in the basket
    getItemCount: function () {
      return basket.length;
    },
 
    // Public alias to a  private function
    doSomething: doSomethingPrivate,
 
    // Get the total value of items in the basket
    getTotal: function () {
 
      var q = this.getItemCount(),
          p = 0;
 
      while (q--) {
        p += basket[q].price;
      }
 
      return p;
    }
  };
})();

Inside the module, you may have noticed that we return an object. This gets automatically assigned to basketModule so that we can interact with it as follows:

// basketModule returns an object with a public API we can use
 
basketModule.addItem({
  item: "bread",
  price: 0.5
});
 
basketModule.addItem({
  item: "butter",
  price: 0.3
});
 
// Outputs: 2
console.log( basketModule.getItemCount() );
 
// Outputs: 0.8
console.log( basketModule.getTotal() );
 
// However, the following will not work:
 
// Outputs: undefined
// This is because the basket itself is not exposed as a part of our
// the public API
console.log( basketModule.basket );
 
// This also won't work as it only exists within the scope of our
// basketModule closure, but not the returned public object
console.log( basket );

The methods above are effectively namespaced inside basketModule.

Notice how the scoping function in the above basket module is wrapped around all of our functions, which we then call and immediately store the return value of. This has a number of advantages including:

• The freedom to have private functions which can only be consumed by our module. As they aren't exposed to the rest of the page (only our exported API is), they're considered truly private.
• Given that functions are declared normally and are named, it can be easier to show call stacks in a debugger when we're attempting to discover what function(s) threw an exception.
• As T.J Crowder has pointed out in the past, it also enables us to return different functions depending on the environment. In the past, I've seen developers use this to perform UA testing in order to provide a code-path in their module specific to IE, but we can easily opt for feature detection these days to achieve a similar goal.

 

Module Pattern Variations

Import mixins

This variation of the pattern demonstrates how globals (e.g jQuery, Underscore) can be passed in as arguments to our module's anonymous function. This effectively allows us to import them and locally alias them as we wish.

// Global module
var myModule = (function ( jQ, _ ) {
 
    function privateMethod1(){
        jQ(".container").html("test");
    }
 
    function privateMethod2(){
      console.log( _.min([10, 5, 100, 2, 1000]) );
    }
 
    return{
        publicMethod: function(){
            privateMethod1();
        }
    };
 
// Pull in jQuery and Underscore
})( jQuery, _ );
 
myModule.publicMethod();

Exports

This next variation allows us to declare globals without consuming them and could similarly support the concept of global imports seen in the last example.

// Global module
var myModule = (function () {
 
  // Module object 
  var module = {},
    privateVariable = "Hello World";
 
  function privateMethod() {
    // ...
  }
 
  module.publicProperty = "Foobar";
  module.publicMethod = function () {
    console.log( privateVariable );
  };
 
  return module;
 
})();

Toolkit And Framework-specific Module Pattern Implementations

Dojo

Dojo provides a convenience method for working with objects called dojo.setObject(). This takes as its first argument a dot-separated string such as myObj.parent.child which refers to a property called "child" within an object "parent" defined inside "myObj". Using setObject() allows us to set the value of children, creating any of the intermediate objects in the rest of the path passed if they don't already exist.

For example, if we wanted to declare basket.core as an object of the store namespace, this could be achieved as follows using the traditional way:

var store = window.store || {};
 
if ( !store["basket"] ) {
  store.basket = {};
}
 
if ( !store.basket["core"] ) {
  store.basket.core = {};
}
 
store.basket.core = {
  // ...rest of our logic
};

Or as follows using Dojo 1.7 (AMD-compatible version) and above:

require(["dojo/_base/customStore"], function( store ){
 
  // using dojo.setObject()
  store.setObject( "basket.core", (function() {
 
      var basket = [];
 
      function privateMethod() {
          console.log(basket);
      }
 
      return {
          publicMethod: function(){
                  privateMethod();
          }
      };
 
  })());
 
});

For more information on dojo.setObject(), see the official documentation.

ExtJS

For those using Sencha's ExtJS, an example demonstrating how to correctly use the Module pattern with the framework can be found below.

Here, we see an example of how to define a namespace which can then be populated with a module containing both a private and public API. With the exception of some semantic differences, it's quite close to how the Module pattern is implemented in vanilla JavaScript:

 

// create namespace
Ext.namespace("myNameSpace");
 
// create application
myNameSpace.app = function () {
 
  // do NOT access DOM from here; elements don't exist yet
  // private variables
 
  var btn1,
      privVar1 = 11;
 
  // private functions
  var btn1Handler = function ( button, event ) {
      console.log( "privVar1=" + privVar1 );
      console.log( "this.btn1Text=" + this.btn1Text );
    };
 
  // public space
  return {
    // public properties, e.g. strings to translate
    btn1Text: "Button 1",
 
    // public methods
    init: function () {
 
      if ( Ext.Ext2 ) {
 
        btn1 = new Ext.Button({
          renderTo: "btn1-ct",
          text: this.btn1Text,
          handler: btn1Handler
        });
 
      } else {
 
        btn1 = new Ext.Button( "btn1-ct", {
          text: this.btn1Text,
          handler: btn1Handler
        });
 
      }
    }
  };
}();

YUI

Similarly, we can also implement the Module pattern when building applications using YUI3. The following example is heavily based on the original YUI Module pattern implementation by Eric Miraglia, but again, isn't vastly different from the vanilla JavaScript version:

Y.namespace( "store.basket" ) ;
Y.store.basket = (function () {
 
    var myPrivateVar, myPrivateMethod;
 
    // private variables:
    myPrivateVar = "I can be accessed only within Y.store.basket.";
 
    // private method:
    myPrivateMethod = function () {
        Y.log( "I can be accessed only from within YAHOO.store.basket" );
    }
 
    return {
        myPublicProperty: "I'm a public property.",
 
        myPublicMethod: function () {
            Y.log( "I'm a public method." );
 
            // Within basket, I can access "private" vars and methods:
            Y.log( myPrivateVar );
            Y.log( myPrivateMethod() );
 
            // The native scope of myPublicMethod is store so we can
            // access public members using "this":
            Y.log( this.myPublicProperty );
        }
    };
 
})();

jQuery

There are a number of ways in which jQuery code unspecific to plugins can be wrapped inside the Module pattern. Ben Cherry previously suggested an implementation where a function wrapper is used around module definitions in the event of there being a number of commonalities between modules.

In the following example, a library function is defined which declares a new library and automatically binds up the init function to document.ready when new libraries (ie. modules) are created.

function library( module ) {
 
  $( function() {
    if ( module.init ) {
      module.init();
    }
  });
 
  return module;
}
 
var myLibrary = library(function () {
 
  return {
    init: function () {
      // module implementation
    }
  };
}());

Advantages

We've seen why the Constructor pattern can be useful, but why is the Module pattern a good choice? For starters, it's a lot cleaner for developers coming from an object-oriented background than the idea of true encapsulation, at least from a JavaScript perspective.

Secondly, it supports private data - so, in the Module pattern, public parts of our code are able to touch the private parts, however the outside world is unable to touch the class's private parts (no laughing! Oh, and thanks to David Engfer for the joke).

Disadvantages

The disadvantages of the Module pattern are that as we access both public and private members differently, when we wish to change visibility, we actually have to make changes to each place the member was used.

We also can't access private members in methods that are added to the object at a later point. That said, in many cases the Module pattern is still quite useful and when used correctly, certainly has the potential to improve the structure of our application.

Other disadvantages include the inability to create automated unit tests for private members and additional complexity when bugs require hot fixes. It's simply not possible to patch privates. Instead, one must override all public methods which interact with the buggy privates. Developers can't easily extend privates either, so it's worth remembering privates are not as flexible as they may initially appear.

For further reading on the Module pattern, see Ben Cherry's excellent in-depth article on it.

 

The Revealing Module Pattern

Now that we're a little more familiar with the module pattern, let’s take a look at a slightly improved version - Christian Heilmann’s Revealing Module pattern.

The Revealing Module pattern came about as Heilmann was frustrated with the fact that he had to repeat the name of the main object when we wanted to call one public method from another or access public variables.  He also disliked the Module pattern’s requirement for having to switch to object literal notation for the things he wished to make public.

The result of his efforts was an updated pattern where we would simply define all of our functions and variables in the private scope and return an anonymous object with pointers to the private functionality we wished to reveal as public.

An example of how to use the Revealing Module pattern can be found below:

var myRevealingModule = (function () {
 
        var privateVar = "Ben Cherry",
            publicVar  = "Hey there!";
 
        function privateFunction() {
            console.log( "Name:" + privateVar );
        }
 
        function publicSetName( strName ) {
            privateVar = strName;
        }
 
        function publicGetName() {
            privateFunction();
        }
 
 
        // Reveal public pointers to
        // private functions and properties
 
        return {
            setName: publicSetName,
            greeting: publicVar,
            getName: publicGetName
        };
 
    })();
 
myRevealingModule.setName( "Paul Kinlan" );

The pattern can also be used to reveal private functions and properties with a more specific naming scheme if we would prefer:

var myRevealingModule = (function () {
 
        var privateCounter = 0;
 
        function privateFunction() {
            privateCounter++;
        }
 
        function publicFunction() {
            publicIncrement();
        }
 
        function publicIncrement() {
            privateFunction();
        }
 
        function publicGetCount(){
          return privateCounter;
        }
 
        // Reveal public pointers to
        // private functions and properties
 
       return {
            start: publicFunction,
            increment: publicIncrement,
            count: publicGetCount
        };
 
    })();
 
myRevealingModule.start();

Advantages

This pattern allows the syntax of our scripts to be more consistent. It also makes it more clear at the end of the module which of our functions and variables may be accessed publicly which eases readability.

Disadvantages

A disadvantage of this pattern is that if a private function refers to a public function, that public function can't be overridden if a patch is necessary. This is because the private function will continue to refer to the private implementation and the pattern doesn't apply to public members, only to functions.

Public object members which refer to private variables are also subject to the no-patch rule notes above.

As a result of this, modules created with the Revealing Module pattern may be more fragile than those created with the original Module pattern, so care should be taken during usage.