The Art of Programming

Often times during our JavaScript development we may need to know the type of an "object" in JavaScript, using the  typeof functionality provided by JavaScript works sometimes and other times it might fail. Some examples are provided below. typeof 2               : returns "number" typeof ""           : returns "string" typeof function(){}   : returns "function" typeof /\d/                 : returns "object"                     // fail !!! this is actually a regexp I have a written a simple replacement function for typeof that pretty much returns the same results, but it's more robust and always returns the correct value var itypeof = function (val) {     return  Object.prototype.toString.call(val).replace(/(\[|object|\s|\])/g,"").toLowerCase() } itypeof(2)                          : returns "number" itypeof ("")                        : returns "string" itypeof (

There are a lot of cases where we may want to generate a pseudo- random universally unique identifier ( UUID ) , sometimes called GUID . I previously wrote an article on creating Pseudo Random numbers in JavaScript, which generates a uuid of length X where x is a numeric value supplied. http://pragmatic-coding.blogspot.com/2012/01/javascript-pseudo-random-id-generator.html The problem with the above generator is that is does not allow developers the flexibility of specifying the format of the uuid as shown below: 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxx0' 'xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-4xxx-yxxx-xxxxxxxxxxx' 'xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-yxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxx' Above I’ve shown you 3 different uuid formats that 3 different developers wanted, so an algorithm had to be devised that allow developers the flexibility of changing the data formats. One other thing to note about the above is the x values, which represents the values you want to be randomly generated. All o

JavaScript Module Pattern: 2 Forms The module pattern is a common JavaScript coding pattern. It's generally well understood, but there are a number of advanced uses that have not gotten a lot of attention. In this article, I'll review the basics and cover some truly remarkable advanced topics, including one which I think is original. In the following guide I will explain two different variation of module pattern that I use during development, namely: Loose Augmentation Function Import Augmentation One limitation of the module pattern so far is that the entire module must be in one file. Anyone who has worked in a large code-base understands the value of splitting among multiple files. Luckily, we have a nice solution to  augment modules . First, we import the module, then we add properties, then we export it. Here's an example, augmenting our  MODULAR  from above: // global object being added to the user space var modular = ( function (

The Gson missing recursive get function. One of the issues with the current get function that is available is that it only search’s top-level entry key for the value that is passed in. Example JsonObject result; // json object for the preview below If a result.get(“username”) is done the following set will return null because as I have said above the inbuilt get function only search top level element you wish to find. The following values exists in the top-level [“result”, “error”, “id”] the inner elements will not be searched which is part of the flaw / weakness of using the in-built method. A solution to this problem is show below: {     "result" : {         "total_items" : 1 ,         "total_pages" : 1 ,         "items_per_page" : 25 ,         "current_page" : 1 ,         "items" : [{                 "username" : "test" ,                 "api