appeared-a-wild v0.9.0

With appeared-a-wild you can register handlers for whatever instances some specified module might throw at you.

For example, if you have a "WebSite" module, which you instantiate by calling var site = new WebSite then appeared-a-wild will let you sort of register to be notified when one of those appears:

appearedAWild(
  ["release-checklist", "web-site"],
  function buildSite(list, site) {
    site.addRoute("get", "/housing-bond", function(request, response) {
      renderList(list, response)
    })
  }
)

Then whenever you declare those instances, your handler will be called:

var WebSite = require("web-site")
var site = new WebSite()
appearedAWild.module(
  "web-site",
  function() { return site }
)

var releaseChecklist = require("release-checklist")
var list = releaseChecklist.get("test")
appearedAWild.module(
  "release-checklist",
  function() { return list }
)

At that point, buildSite will get called with site and list.

Why

Typical node programs are designed to be started from the command line. You have "root" access to some machine, you require("express"), you hit some external ports, you grab stuff from the filesystem, etc.

Appeared-a-wild allows you to define hooks to those resources, without necessarily having instances of those resources yet. So that regardless of where that resource might come from... either a site that got started on a local UNIX port, or a site that is getting broadcasted into the browser, our code can just register that it's ready to work with that resource, wherever it might come from.

You can think of it as a commonjs-like namespace for instances rather than singletons. Which runs on top of commonjs's interface for defining singletons.