Something similar to java.util in Javascript?

Question

Hi,

I think Javascript is a fantastic language. I like all the little peculiarities, the inheritance model, the lack of classes, etc. Because of this I have never wanted to learn a framework as all of the ones I've looked at (jQuery, MooTools, Prototype, Dojo) force you to change how you write your code, in many cases it's not really even Javascript anymore.

Yet, I feel the same frustration every time I have to implement something as fundamental as a hash table or a linked list. Sure, I write it once and never again, but given how many times these structures have been coded by other people before me I really shouldn't have to.

Are there any "pure" Javascript libraries that will give you a bunch of basic data structures and utilities, similar to what you find in java.util? Again, I don't want anything that changes the way I code, I want to use these objects within vanilla Javascript.

Thanks

Answer 1

Maybe not really what you were looking for, but you might be interested in the Google Web Toolkit.

The GWT is an open source set of tools that allows web developers to create and maintain complex JavaScript front-end applications in Java.

One of the main components of GWT is the "JRE emulation library", a library of JavaScript implementations of the commonly used classes in the Java standard class library, such as most of the java.lang package classes and a subset of the java.util package classes.

"In many cases it's not really even JavaScript anymore"... Note that this is literally the case with GWT, but I believe it deserves to be mentioned in this question.

Answer 2

Google's Closure library has lots of data structures in it. The API documentation is at http://closure-library.googlecode.com/svn/docs/index.html (check the goog.structs "package").

Answer 3

Frankly, I think you're crazy for not wanting to look into jQuery or Prototype or just about any web framework, but if you want pure coding-oriented stuff you might look at Functional.js: http://osteele.com/sources/javascript/functional/

In my opinion most of the "data structure" stuff in the Java libraries really isn't appropriate for Javascript in any direct way. One of the most important epiphanies I had when learning Javascript was to really "get" that Javascript is nothing like Java, and one of the first steps on the path to enlightenment is to stop trying to make it be like Java.

Answer 4

I've written a standalone JavaScript implementation of a hash table that is certainly influenced by Java's Hashtable: http://www.timdown.co.uk/jshashtable. I've also now added an implementation of HashSet.