Handle no window object with Webpack

[christianalfoni]

In environments like Webpack there is no this to refer to the global object. But you do have global, which is the Node global object.

I suggest supporting that to ensure logging works. An other fix would be to check if root actually exists when logging.

At least now it breaks with Webpack, which is too bad :-/

[ljharb]

It'd be helpful to add a test to cover this case - even if it used webpack as a dev dependency.

Also, if we're making changes to the UMD, what about web workers, and node-webkit?

[christianalfoni]

Hm, good point... though hard to verify if it actually runs in those environments? Maybe check for known globals that has a console object? Like: (window || global), instead of (this || global). And when logging check if root actually is available, as it might not be in certain environments.

So the test case would be to run logging with an undefined root? And a defined root, but with no console object. Not sure how to verify that window and global actually exists in different environments.

[ljharb]

Sadly the only truly reliable way to get the global object in all environments is Function('return this')(), which breaks CSP - but if you know you're not in strict mode, you could do (function () { return this; }()) as well.

[christianalfoni]

Ah, interesting, yes that works with Webpack. I believe Webpack runs all modules in "strict mode" by default.

So maybe (Function('return this')()) is the best check?

[ljharb]

Doing that, however, utterly prevents the use of the library in Chrome apps, because CSP will error out on eval.

[christianalfoni]

Aha, okay, then I vote for:

(this || window || global)

Identify known environments. Webpack is becoming increasingly popular, so sad to see this lib become unusable just because of this :-)

[ljharb]

We'd also need self - ie, self || window || global. see https://github.com/paulmillr/es6-shim/blob/master/es6-shim.js#L146-L154

[christianalfoni]

Cool, let me update the pull request :-)

[christianalfoni]

Okay, created a new commit: https://github.com/christianalfoni/polyglot.js/commit/1f5efbce5289cc79b663133c2bdfaad489851390

[ljharb]

(We can now use http://npmjs.com/system.global to get the global object)

[ljharb]

This is now obviated by #53, which removes legacy bower/component/UMD machinery.