multiple now's on a page (noConflict mode)

[tedsuo]

My use case is a page with several widgets on it, all powered by nowjs but with different backends. Currently loading the second widget would overwrite the now namespace of the first widget.

[sridatta]

This is not supported each page counts as one client and now namespaces are associated with a single client.

However, the now namespace can be partitioned as you wish. One widget could put properties in now.widgetOne while another can use properties placed in now.widgetTwo . Would that work for you?

[dvv]

Wonder if you could return now from a closure, instead of directly set window.now et al?

[tedsuo]

sridatta: hmmm, sounds like that would tie these apps together on the backend, correct? In my ideal world they would remain separate, and not need to be on the same subnet.

A related use case is that "now" is a pretty common word, so it's possible that there could be a conflict with another library trying to use the same namespace, such as prototype and jquery both using the $ namespace. I'm pretty sure you could solve this without providing multiple now's, and it would be easier.

[ericz]

@tedsuo It would make more sense to put each widget in an iframe, in which case the JS is sandboxed and multiple now connections for each widget would work.

[tommedema]

I do agree with dvv's comment that returning a now object is much better than setting a window global.

[ericz]

@tommedema, @dvv

I am hesitant to change from setting a window global to returning a now object. Primarily that would break existing implementations using nowjs. So far I have not heard of any conflicting javascript library.

[tommedema]

@ericz, since the project is so young, you should consider creating a mayor release if you wish to change the API or default behavior, (eg. disabling variable synching and to disable client-side writing by default).

Personally I think it's a bad idea to not implement improvements because it could break existing code at such an early stage.

[dvv]

I personally strongly agree to @tommedema. Should be no fear to split the community, as the changes to client code are not that huge. The benefits of having multiple contexts are clear, imho.

[balupton]

While for this I'm not that concerned, but for the notion of fear to make big changes I do agree with @tommedema - expanding onto this I feel the node.js community is use to the their libraries constantly evolving and changing, it is part of being the greatest and best - sometimes you have to break stuff to kick butt :P

[ericz]

Hmm alright I'll try to make this happen

[steveWang]

Check out v0.7's latest commit -- with the following code, this can now be accomplished:

var nowjs = require('now');
nowjs.initialize(server, {scope: 'myObj.scope'});

It's actually just one of the configurable options, so just add it into the options object that you're passing in.