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Immediate Functions

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SummaryBeginner-friendly introduction to immediate functions.
Shared2015-10-06

This article is intended for JavaScript beginners.

The browser environment is one big JavaScript closure that will encapsulate in its scope all of the code that is to be run. Because of this, any functions or variables that are created in <script> tags or external .js files that are not defined within a function will end up as global variables! And we all know that global varibles are bad. Let’s dig in to this some more.

Every time you define a function and then define a variable with var inside of that function, that variable only exists inside of that function. For example, what is the value of result that is logged to the console?

// app.js
function kelvinToFahrenheit(kelvin) {
  var result = Math.round(kelvin * (9/5) - 459.67);
  return result;
}
kelvinToFahrenheit(274.3);
console.log(result);

The correct answer would be undefined (with a nice error), for result only exists within the scope of the kelvinToFahrenheit function. However, the function kelvinToFahrenheit now exists globally.

Why does this matter? Well, when you include a script on to a web page, its code now becomes part of this global closure. So if you define function kelvinToFahrenheit() without giving it a separate closure or namespace (more on namespaces in a second), then it is now a “global function,” meaning that it exists in the global namespace. If any other library you ever include uses a variable called router, your variable (or that library’s) is going to overwrite whichever came before it and cause massive issues. The same thing is true for variables:

// app.js
var currentTempInKelvin = 294.11;

So what are your options?

Immediately Invoked Function Expressions (IIFEs)

// app.js
;(function() {
  // your code here
})();

The semi-colon here is a defensive technique used for when files are concatenated together–if somebody in one file forgets to close their file/library/definition out with a semi-colon, then your code is going to be an extension of theirs.

The () towards the end is nothing more than the invocation of the immediate function we’ve defined.

Thus, when you write

// app.js
;(function() {
  var currentTempInKelvin = 294.11;
})();

and then you try to console.log(currentTempInKelvin); from the browser’s JavaScript console, you will get undefined, for currentTempInKelvin now only exists within that anonymous function’s scope. Hurray! No more globals.


But what if we want to access something in a global fashion? We know about the problems of name-clashing, so let’s also try to reduce that. Let’s combine what you did with the immediate function and do global variables in a less-bad way using namespacing.

Namespacing

Namespacing allows us to limit our use of global variables to one global by nesting all of our functionality within one global object that we’ll call WeatherApp.

// app.js
// No var declaration means global!
;(function() {
  WeatherApp = {
    kelvinToFahrenheit: {}
  };
})();

or

// app.js
;(function() {
  WeatherApp = {};
  WeatherApp.kelvinToFahrenheit = {};
})();

or (better)

// app.js
;(function() {
  window.WeatherApp = {};
  window.WeatherApp.kelvinToFahrenheit = {};
})();

or (recommended)

// app.js
;(function(scope) {
  scope.WeatherApp = {};
  scope.WeatherApp.router = {};
})(this);

This last method allows you to use this code and pass in any contextual scope. Since this is equivalent to window at the global level, when you run this in the browser, this is window, so WeatherApp will be added to the window global.

When you leave out the var, you create a global variable, so be careful! I recommend being explicit with to what object you are adding a namespace. If you’re going the global variable route, then you should nest every single thing you’re doing inside of your WeatherApp namespace in order to avoid having more than 1 global variable.

Conclusion

This is a great pattern to utilize when you have relatively simple JavaScript you would like to add to a webpage and not have its contents clash with other libraries & code. If your code begins to get too complicated for this file, then we can start to look at the CommonJS module exporting & requiring pattern that is currently implemented by the wonderful Browserify library (aka, Node.js but in the browser). I may cover this in the future, but in the mean time, leverage the power of immediate functions for great good!