Javascript Plugin Development , Extending Libraries

Question

i got two javascript objects api and myApi :

var api = {};
api.foo = function(){ ... };
api.foo2 = function(){ ... };

var myApi = {};
myApi.foo = function(){ ...};
myApi.myFoo = function(){ ...};
myApi.myFoo2 = function(){ ...};

i want to add all myApi.* functions to api object without overriding api.foo.

Indeed, i want learn how to extend APIs to each other and developing plugins with javascript.

What are the best practices in this subject?

Answer 1

To answer the first part of your question, you can modify the merge method I use in some of my code:

if (typeof Object.merge !== 'function') {
    Object.merge = function (o1, o2) { // Function to merge all of the properties from one object into another
        for(var i in o2) { o1[i] = o2[i]; }
        return o1;
    };
} 

To not overwrite preexisting objects, you would have to add a check:

if (typeof Object.merge !== 'function') {
    Object.merge = function (o1, o2) { // Function to merge all of the properties from one object into another
        for(var i in o2) { if(!(i in o1)) o1[i] = o2[i]; }
        return o1;
    };
}