I'm looking for a way to define Clojurescript functions in the Javascript global namespace at pile time. What I mean by pile-time is that I want the Clojurescript piler to output this: function some_fn() { }. I know that this is not idiomatic and everything should reside in a namespace but the environment that I'm in forces me to do this. So, ideally something like (defn ^:global some-fn []) that would work similar to how :export works but ignores the namespace.

I'm aware of the runtime method for defining global functions using goog.global, e.g (set! goog.global.someFunction some-clojure-fn) but this doesn't work in my environment.

I'm looking for a way to define Clojurescript functions in the Javascript global namespace at pile time. What I mean by pile-time is that I want the Clojurescript piler to output this: function some_fn() { }. I know that this is not idiomatic and everything should reside in a namespace but the environment that I'm in forces me to do this. So, ideally something like (defn ^:global some-fn []) that would work similar to how :export works but ignores the namespace.

I'm aware of the runtime method for defining global functions using goog.global, e.g (set! goog.global.someFunction some-clojure-fn) but this doesn't work in my environment.

• javascript
• clojurescript

• 2 Are you aware that if you annotate your function with ^:export you can refer to it directly from javascript? e.g. my.name.space.some_fn() – Stephen Nelson Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 10:42
• Yes I am. I'm afraid that I really want it to be a top level function because I can't deal with the name.space.prefix stuff. – Frank Versnel Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 12:07
• Kanaka's answer is what you're after then. Window is where top-level stuff lives. – Stephen Nelson Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 19:48
• some javascript environments don't provide any sort of global object, which means we need to generate var foo = "bar" - is this possible? – tvachon Commented Nov 14, 2013 at 15:39

2 Answers 2

Perhaps you could define it in a namespace and then expose it in the window (or GLOBAL or this depending on your environment) object:

(defn foo [x] (* 2 x))
(aset js/window "foo" myns/foo)  ;; where myns is where foo is defined

You should then be able to call foo from the window (which is the global JavaScript namespace in the browser).

Update: As suggested by @TerjeNorderhaug, you can set a variable in the global namespace like this:

(set! js/foo foo)

Setting a javascript var to an anonymous Clojurescript function will define the piled function in the Javascript global namespace:

(set! js/some_fn (fn []))

Calling the function works as expected:

(js/some_fn)