Surnamespacing

Zach Leatherman — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:30:31 +0000

Everyone has a library. Everyone has their own utility classes and functions they're using in their own personal and contracted projects. And now that everyone has a blog too, they're all releasing their libraries as open source, using the commando underoo philosophy of wild, free, and unrestricted naming schemes for their code. Not anymore. Let's surnamespace.

What does surnamespacing give me?

Accountability: Your code is directly linked to your family honor. You'd be surprised how hard people work at test cases and increased code coverage when the respect of their lineage is at stake.
Connect with your Extended Family: Connect with programmers sharing your namespace, your family is now your development team.
Minimize Collisons: The ball and chain associated with an imposed naming scheme means that we won't have everyone using foo and bar to hold their code, unless you're the lucky son of a bitch that has inherited that top notch surnamespace real estate.
Faster Initial Development Cycle: Sometimes naming your library is the hardest part. Skip this step and just surnamespace it.

Jesus Christ, please show me some examples:

JavaScript Surnamespacing

Java Surnamespacing

package Christ;
public class Jesus {
public void walkOn(String s) {}
public void turn(String from, String to) {}
public void respawn() {}
}

PHP 6 Surnamespacing (projected usage)

namespace Christ {
class Jesus {
public function walkOn($obj) {}
public function turn($from, $to) {}
public function respawn() {}
}
}

Update: Apparently I can't write Java code. Don't tell work.

JavaScript Frameworks and JSF

Zach Leatherman — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 02:24:05 +0000

You're programming a new web application using JSF, maybe with Facelets, maybe without. Which client-side JavaScript framework is going to work with it's unstandardized method of assigning ID attributes to it's elements? Here is an example of a JSF file:
<%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" prefix="h" %> <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core" prefix="f" %>

or maybe the same thing using Facelets:
xmlns:h="http://java.sun.com/jsf/html" xmlns:f="http://java.sun.com/jsf/core">

These will both output the following result:
xmlns:ui="http://java.sun.com/jsf/facelets">

Notice how the resulting text field has an ID attribute with the parent id prepended on. Now the real question is, how do we select this result node using the various JavaScript frameworks that are available to us?

Works, but we don't care: Raw JavaScript or any GetById Function

Obviously using document.getElementById( 'myForm:myText' ); will function correctly. As will any framework that has a similar "GetById" function (YAHOO.util.Dom.get, or $ in Prototype, etc) What is more interesting to us is the behavior using the various CSS selector packages included with each JavaScript library.

Does not work: DomQuery in Ext 1.1 Beta 2

Ext.query( '#myForm:myText' );

Ext.query( '#myForm\:myText' );

These two tests will throw the error Ext.DomQuery.pseudos[name] is not a function, which obviously means that myText is not a pseudo class like :first or :last.

Ext.query( '#myForm\\:myText' );

Throws the error: Error parsing selector, parsing failed at "\:myText"

Works: jQuery 1.1.3

jQuery( '#myForm\\:myText' );

As of version 1.1.3 (the latest of this writing), they have added support for the colon in ID selection when escaped with a double backslash. Versions older than 1.1.3 will not function properly. This is not yet in the documentation but can be viewed in the Escape selectors section of a blog post.

Does not Work: Prototype 1.5.1.1

$$( '#myForm:myText' );

$$( '#myForm\:myText' );

Returns the form instead of the input element and treats myText as a pseudo class.

$$( '#myForm\\:myText' );

Interprets as XPATH selectors (\\ means anywhere in the document), using myText as a pseudo selector now, so it returns ALL nodes in the document.

Does not Work: Dojo query 0.9.0 Beta

dojo.query( '#myForm:myText' );

dojo.query( '#myForm\:myText' );

dojo.query( '#myForm\\:myText' );

It's becoming mind numbingly obvious that if the framework doesn't specifically say that you can escape selectors, it's not going to let you do so. In the first two tests, Dojo performs the same as Prototype. In the double backslash test however, Dojo returns no result nodes.

Does not Work: Mootools 1.11