DEV Community

Facade pattern in JavaScript

Tomasz Buszewski on December 23, 2018

When building an application, we often face problems with external APIs. One has simple methods, other has them very complicated. Unifying them und...

Read full post

Saeed • Jul 11 '19 • Edited

amazing! thanks for great article!
just out of curiosity, would it be nicer if we use symbol instead of string literals for different types?
and then instead of switch using strategy pattern using symbol as object key to select intended function

Tomasz Buszewski • Jul 11 '19

You can use Symbol, example I've brought is purely illustrational. Or you can try TypeScript and use enums. Choose whatever you're most comfortable with, but remember to stick with it :)

fabriziobertoglio1987 • Jan 6 '20 • Edited

in ruby would be .send(:"_findMusic", id), in JS _findMusic.call(this, id)?? or something similar??... thanks

Tomasz Buszewski • Jan 7 '20

Hi fabriziobertoglio1987, can you rephrase your question? I don't seem to understand it fully :)

fabriziobertoglio1987 • Jan 7 '20

I was referring to use either Symbol or other code like .call or other Object method to delete your switch statement and replace it with a loop

developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...

Tomasz Buszewski • Jan 7 '20

Why would you obscure such a simple statement with a loop? It would be shorter, true, but more complex to the reader.

fabriziobertoglio1987 • Jan 7 '20 • Edited

It is a common practive in Ruby. Right now would be done for exercise and experimentation, but it would make a lot of sense when you don't have only 1 switch statement and your code grows in complexity.

I don't like switch or if statements

keithcirkel.co.uk/metaprogramming-...

Tomasz Buszewski • Jan 7 '20

I don't know about Ruby, but in fact some languages don't even have switch statements, for example, Python.

Creating a code that'll "know" which function to run without you telling it to with a direct statement is nice, but always try to think about some junior devs that might join your team. I had this phase of writing super complex code that only senior developers understood. But I quickly backed away, as I wasn't able to go on vacation, since I was the one person in the current team that understood how it all worked.

fabriziobertoglio1987 • Jan 7 '20 • Edited

(But I quickly backed away, as I wasn't able to go on vacation, since I was the one person in the current team that understood how it all worked) :-D

Yes, I guess everything has its downside.

I think using metaprogramming sometimes is literally an alternative to using design patterns. For example the Factory Design Pattern allows you dinamically create objects, but you could solve the same problem with inheritance and metaprogramming

alligator.io/js/factory-pattern/

but the code would me much harder to read and does not make sense in Frontend Development.

The good thing is that Ecmascript now is really advanced and you are free to do anything with it. It is very good for Frontend, but also backend development.