Where are the die hard JavaScripter here?

[Christophe27]

Hi,

I'm struggling with a problem for quite some time and would be happy to finally find a solution. I use JS on the front and backend (Node).

I store all my functionallity for the backend in one global variable. This is partially true, but for the simplicity of this example, let's go with that

GLOBAL = {
    base: {
        getTemplates: function() {
            // Contruct a template object
        },
        otherFunction: function() {
            // Do some other cool JS stuff
        }
    }
}

Ok, now I'm looking for a way to trigger a particular function on the backend, from the frontend. For the communication between front and back I use socket.io. Socket.io let you pass an object with values.

I was wondering if I could do something like this

var o = {
    namespace:  [base][getTemplates]
}

io.emit('request', o, function(templates){});

This way I hope to receive at the backend an object with a value which defines the exact places of the particular function on the backend and contruct the function on the backend like follows:

io.on('req', function( params) {
    
    // Append the namespace to our GLOBAL variable to point the exact
    // location of the function, namely GLOBAL.base.getTemplates() and
    // return the result back to the frontend.
    return GLOBAL[params.namespace]();

});

Can we solve this problem with something like JSON.stringify or ...

Any help is more than welcome!!!

Thanks in advance!!!

Christophe

[bionoid]

Hi Christophe27,

Just my 2c, but you could walk the global variable using a string you pass back.
In this example, I'm just passing back a string like "base.getTemplates" and then execute the resulting function (which I'm just alerting here):

var GLOBAL = {
    base: {
        getTemplates: function() {
        	return 'gettemplates result';
        },
        otherFunction: function() {
        	return 'otherfunction result';
        }
    }
};

alert(function(params)
{

	var i, path = String(params.namespace).split('.'), obj = GLOBAL;
	for (i = 0; i < path.length; ++i) {obj = obj[path[i]];}
	return obj();

}({
	namespace : 'base.getTemplates'
}));

Hope that gives you some ideas.