Closure: The Definitive Guide

Chapter 4. Common Utilities

The Closure Library contains utilities for many common tasks, but as is often the case when encountering a new library, the problem is finding the functionality that you need. This chapter introduces the most commonly used utilities in the Library, which should serve as a good starting point. It also provides some insight into how the Library is organized, which should help when searching for functionality that is not covered in this chapter.

Each file in the Closure Library defines one or more namespaces. Generally, a namespace either is a host for a collection of related functions or identifies a constructor function for a new class. This chapter focuses on the former: it will introduce many of the most commonly used “function namespaces” from the Library and discuss a handful of functions from each. The following chapter will focus on the latter: it will explain how constructor functions and object prototypes are used to represent classes and inheritance in Closure.

Unlike the previous chapter, which explained every member of the goog namespace in detail, this is not meant to be a comprehensive reference for each namespace. Instead, this chapter will discuss only a handful of functions from the libraries most commonly used in Closure. Each function that was chosen has nuances which will be explained. Some of these subtleties result from the use of a Closure-specific design pattern, so it is recommended that this chapter be read in its entirety to gain ...