One Var To Rule Them All

As I was watching a great Tech Session video from ESRI's last Developer Summit on the JavaScript API, I was introduced to the concept of global variables being evil. Further research confirmed that I needed to alter my coding patterns a little bit. Since then I have tried to keep global variables to a minimum. If I do need them I have started storing them within a single variable like this:

// global variable
var g = {};
g.baseURL = "http://gis.sandy.utah.gov/ArcGIS/rest/services/";
g.googleBaseURL = g.baseURL + "Public_Works/Google_Basemap/MapServer";
g.bwURL = g.baseURL + "Public_Works/BulkWasteAreas/MapServer";
g.vectorQueryURL = g.baseURL + "Public_Works/Vector_Basemap/MapServer/6";
g.locatorURL = g.baseURL + "Sandy_Address_Locator/GeocodeServer";
g.fldBW_DATE = "BW_DATE";
g.fldAREA_NUM = "AREA_NUM";

This has kept my code a little cleaner and has made it far easier to find the evil things during run-time with FireBug. My latest project with bulk waste data was my first attempt at global variable redemption.