Packages and Imports

In BoxLang, a package is a collection of related components, functions, and variables. Packages help in organizing code into logical units, making it easier to maintain and understand. They also provide a namespace that prevents naming conflicts between different parts of a program.

By default, the package space of a class is the directory path, in dot-notation, from the webroot. For example, the default package of a class located at models/foo/Bar.bx would be models.foo. This can, however, be defined in the class, separately from the path.

To define a package in BoxLang, you use the class keyword and define the package in the attributes of the class. For example:

class package="com.example" {
    // package code here
}

This code defines a package named com.example. All components and functions defined within this package will be part of the com.example namespace.

Importing in BoxLang is done using the import keyword. The import statement is used to bring in a package or a specific component from a package into the current scope. For example:

import "com.example.*";

This statement imports all components from the com.example package. If you want to import a specific component, you can do so like this:

import "com.example.MyComponent";

This statement imports only the MyComponent component from the com.example package.

It's important to note that BoxLang is a dynamic language, and as such, it resolves package and component names at runtime, not at compile time. This means that you can use dynamic strings in your import statements, like so:

import "com.example.#componentName#";

In this statement, #componentName# is a variable that contains the name of the component to import. This feature makes BoxLang very flexible, but it can also lead to runtime errors if the component or package doesn't exist.

Packages and imports in BoxLang provide a way to organize code into logical units and to reuse code across different parts of a program.