How does the "jimport" function from "etherpad" work?

Question

In etherpad's source I've seen code like:

jimport(java.util.Date, "JDate");

But it doesn't seem like some kind of javascript standard.

How is it done?

Answer 1

Looks like you're looking at the etherpad source. There they defined a helper function named jimport.

As mentioned, etherpad uses Rhino as its Javascript engine, which have Java available at his fingertips. So it is enough to make

file = java.io.File

in order to "import" it.

This function uses the helper function _jimportSinglePackage, to inject the Java package into the local Javascript scope.

This function receives the package name, and the global scope to which it'll inject the package to, and given a.b.c its essentially calling globalscope[c] = a.b.c, in order to import this Java package.