AMD counterpart for dojo.global

[vvoovv]

​http://livedocs.dojotoolkit.org/dojo/global hasn't been updated to reflect AMD syntax.

Should .global be accessed from dojo/_base/kernel or from dojo/_base/window ?

[bill]

I get confused by this too. IIRC Rawld said that at least sometimes global should be accessed from kernel, for code that's supposed to work in a server environment where there is no window. But in that case, what's the meaning of dojo.global anyway? (I found that manual page to be lacking.)

[Rawld Gill]

On the browser, dojo.global is really only useful/interesting when used with the dojo/_base/window API because you can otherwise just write window.

On some other environments, the only way to reliably get to the global object without using some special variable (e.g., node's process.global) it so call a function without context like this:

  var global = (function(){return this;})();
  // global is now guaranteed to be the global object

dojo/_base/kernel initializes dojo.global as such, so dojo.global could be useful syntax sugar for programs that work in several different non-browser environments.

[bill]

I guess @rcgill is saying that when running in NodeJS you should use dojo/kernel::global, but in a browser you should use dojo/_base/window::global.

BTW, ideally this would be documented in the reference pages for those modules, ​http://livedocs.dojotoolkit.org/dojo/_base/kernel, which doesn't exist yet :-(, and ​http://livedocs.dojotoolkit.org/dojo/_base/window. In addition to being cross referenced from ​http://livedocs.dojotoolkit.org/dojo/global.

[Rawld Gill]

looking at this again I noticed

• dojo/_base/kernel returns dojo
• dojo/_base/window returns dojo.global *at the time the factory is run*...which is useless with using the rest dojo/_base/window API

So, the answer is: use dojo/_base/kernel.global (or just dojo.global).

Leaving open to update docs.

[bill]

I updated the docs a few weeks ago, closing this.

[bill]

Rawld, this is from Bryan's email, can you confirm?

In the AMD world, |this| within a factory function should always be the global object (someone please correct me if I'm wrong):

define([], function(){
   var global = this;
});

That seems simpler than adding dojo/_base/kernel to your dependency list.

Now, kernel.global is special because it's value can be altered by dojo/_base/window::setContext() and winGlobal(), or by someone just setting kernel.global = foo... but for server-ish code that feature (or side effect) doesn't seem useful, do you agree? As an example see dojo/string.js which defines substitute() as:

string.substitute = function(   /*String*/              template,
        /*Object|Array*/map,
        /*Function?*/   transform,
        /*Object?*/             thisObject){
...
thisObject = thisObject || kernel.global;
...
}

[bill]

Updated the docs again, see ​https://github.com/dojo/docs/commit/c5a428e48191b6ff214dff1e7f1e9c99a6efb6e4.