revealing-module-pattern.md

Revealing Module Pattern

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TL;DR

This is a pattern where we would simply define all of our functions and variables in the private scope and return an anonymous object with pointers to the private functionality we wished to reveal as public.

    var myRevealingModule = (function () {

        var privateVar = "Ben Cherry",
            publicVar = "Hey there!";

        function privateFunction() {
            console.log("Name:" + privateVar);
        }

        function publicSetName(strName) {
            privateVar = strName;
        }

        function publicGetName() {
            privateFunction();
        }


        // Reveal public pointers to
        // private functions and properties

        return {
            setName: publicSetName,
            greeting: publicVar,
            getName: publicGetName
        };

    })();

myRevealingModule.setName("Paul Kinlan");

Advantages

• This pattern allows the syntax of our scripts to be more consistent. It also makes it more clear at the end of the module which of our functions and variables may be accessed publicly which eases readability.

Disadvantages

• A disadvantage of this pattern is that if a private function refers to a public function, that public function can't be overridden if a patch is necessary. This is because the private function will continue to refer to the private implementation and the pattern doesn't apply to public members, only to functions.