Pro JavaScript Design Patterns (Recipes: a Problem-Solution Ap) (Paperback)

~ (Author), Dustin Diaz (Author)
Key Phrases: prototypal inheritance, lazy loading singleton, var bicycle, Public Library, Ajax Connection Queue, Formltem Field (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

As a web developer, you’ll already know that JavaScript is a powerful language, allowing you to add an impressive array of dynamic functionality to otherwise static web sites. But there is more power waiting to be unlocked—JavaScript is capable of full object–oriented capabilities, and by applying OOP principles, best practices, and design patterns to your code, you can make it more powerful, more efficient, and easier to work with alone or as part of a team.

With Pro JavaScript Design Patterns, you’ll start with the basics of object–oriented programming in JavaScript applicable to design patterns, including making JavaScript more expressive, inheritance, encapsulation, information hiding, and more. With that covered, you can kick–start your JavaScript development in the second part of the book, where you’ll find detail on how to implement and take advantage of several design patterns in JavaScript, including composites, decorators, façades, adapters, and many more.

Each chapter is packed with real–world examples of how the design patterns are best used and expert advice on writing better code, as well as what to watch out for. Along the way you’ll discover how to create your own libraries and APIs for even more efficient coding.

• Master the basics of object–oriented programming in JavaScript, as they apply to design patterns.
• Apply design patterns to your kick–start your JavaScript development.
• Work through several real–world examples.

What you’ll learn

• How to apply object–oriented programming techniques in JavaScript
• How to take advantage of inheritance, interfaces, and encapsulation and information hiding to kick–start your JavaScript development
• How to implement several design patterns in your JavaScript projects, including factory, façade, bridge, composite, adapter, decorator, flyweight, proxy, command, observer, and chain of responsibility
• How to make your code easier to manage in a team environment, as well as on your own
• How to create your own libraries and APIs

Who is this book for?

This book will be an invaluable learning tool for any experienced JavaScript developer.

About the Apress Pro Series

The Apress Pro series books are practical, professional tutorials to keep you on and moving up the professional ladder.

You have gotten the job, now you need to hone your skills in these tough competitive times. The Apress Pro series expands your skills and expertise in exactly the areas you need. Master the content of a Pro book, and you will always be able to get the job done in a professional development project. Written by experts in their field, Pro series books from Apress give you the hard–won solutions to problems you will face in your professional programming career.

About the Author

Ross Harmes works as a frontend engineer in Sunnyvale, California, where he creates modular and reusable JavaScript components for Yahoo! Small Business.

Dustin Diaz is a user interface engineer for Google in Mountain View, California. He enjoys writing JavaScript, CSS, and HTML, as well as making interactive and usable interfaces to inspire passionate users.

Product Details

• Paperback: 269 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (December 10, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159059908X
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599082
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 9.1 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #124,434 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An excellent title for experienced JavaScript developers, January 20, 2008

By	James Stewart (Grand Rapids, MI, USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Design patterns, and particularly their application in dynamic languages can be a controversial topic, and every now and again another round of blog posts bubbles up appalled at the way a new group of programmers have become infatuated with design patterns. Applied without care design patterns can quickly lead to over-engineered code that seems designed as much to draw on as many of the established patterns as possible as to solve the intended problem. But if applied with care, and with consideration of how a pattern applies in the context of your chosen language they can be a helpful way to draw on the wisdom of the coders that came before you, and make your code easier to understand to those who may inherit it.

Written by Dustin Diaz (of Google) and Ross Harmes (of Yahoo), Pro Javascript Design Patterns builds on experience of building complex, high profile javascript applications. That experience shows as each pattern is introduced with solid examples and sample code and then refined to provide looser-coupling, more flexibility and/or better performance.

Early on in the book I was concerned that some of the solutions could become too heavy and the early introduction of interfaces hinted at something akin to the early approaches to pattern usage in PHP, which often looked more like an attempt to turn PHP into Java than a way to use PHP's own features better. As the book goes on the usefulness of those interfaces, particularly for large development teams, becomes clear and most of those concerns are allayed, especially as the authors offer pros and cons for the use of each pattern and are clearly focussed on how these patterns can help produce more robust solutions.

Most of the patterns will have a fairly immediate impact for developers new to them, and even for those who have used them in other contexts it is helpful to see how they have been applied in JavaScript. Most modern JavaScript libraries rely on several of these patterns to abstract out handling of different browser quirks or adding new event types, and even if you rely heavily on one or more of the major libraries this guide may well help you understand their internals better.

I've sometimes been skeptical of books claiming to be targeted at an advanced target. Labels like "pro" are often handed out far too easily. But in this case it seems deserved. While the book does a good job of quickly introducing approaches to object-oriented programming in JavaScript, that's based on an assumption of a solid knowledge of the language and of OO development in at least one language. If you're a newcomer to JavaScript or just looking for a way to add a few fancy features to your web pages this isn't be book for you. But if you have some serious JavaScript development experience and are needing a way to tighten up your code to make it more modular and more maintainable, this book is well worth your time.

Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Toughie not fluffy, March 25, 2008

By	Elizabeth Munroe (California) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a "JavaScript for Programmers" book. It's very detailed and advanced. I wouldn't classify it as a "JavaScript for Web Weenies" or a "JavaScript for Stupid UI Tricks" book at all. If you don't know OOP concepts in another language already, this book really might be too much for you and could frustrate you. This book is good if you are a server-side programmer and you want to know how to push JavaScript about as far as it can go (at this point). If you are a web programmer/designer with a light understanding of OOP concepts and you want to "go deep", this book could be ok, but I would try to learn OOP from another language first because this book would read better with that background knowledge. Also, I am recommending that you already know OOP from another language because you can really shoot yourself in the foot with JavaScript because it's *so* flexible and the authors prove this well! I think it's probably a good idea to know when you're going off in the weeds and JavaScript really doesn't provide many boundaries where other languages have stricter controls on what you can do.

This book shows that when used by an experienced person, JavaScript is no joke. Seriously.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book rocks!, May 27, 2008

By	Ricardo Dapaz "IT Consultant" (Perth, WA Australia) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Harmes and Diaz bend, twist, fold and stretch the Javascript language in ways that it wasn't probably intended to ever be used and, in doing so, demonstrate just how flexible and dynamic Javascript is. They actually cover topics such as Interfaces, encapsulation, inherittance, the singleton pattern, the factory pattern, the bridge pattern, the composite pattern, the adapter pattern, the proxy pattern, the lightweight pattern and the command pattern.

Early on in the book when looking at the interface pattern, when it was suggested an implementation of this pattern with comments, I actually thought that this just wasn't going to work for me. They do, however, show a much more credible implementation of this and other patterns and, in the process, cover some of the deeper and more powerful features of the language. The examples are highlighted against specific applications. For instance, the benefits of the singleton pattern are explained through the process of creating an XHR object (an instance of the XMLHttpRequest).

I haven't finished the book yet, but it is clear that this is one to keep going back to. As someone else has already mentioned, this is not a showcase of UI tricks and will be appreciated by someone developing or extending web development frameworks or someone who just wants to write better and more extensible Javascript.

I would have liked to have seen some examples of how the patterns are used in frameworks such as Prototype/Scriptaculous and jQuery in the same vein that Olsen's "Design Patterns in Ruby" (an excellent book if you are into Ruby) illustrates patterns with code used in Rails, Ruby and other applications in the wild. Also, I found that I needed to brush up on my Javascript (bigtime) in order to keep up with this one (Resig's "Pro Javascript Techniques" and Crockford's "JavaScript: The Good Parts" are highly recommenced to that end). Then again, the Authors might have then struggled to keep this at just under 270 pages.

Highly recommended!