So far I saw three ways for creating an object in JavaScript. Which way is best for creating an object and why?
I also saw that in all of these examples the keyword var
is not used before a property — why? Is it not necessary to declare var
before the name of a property as it mentioned that properties are variables?
In the second and third way, the name of the object is in upper-case whereas in the first way the name of the object is in lower-case. What case should we use for an object name?
function person(fname, lname, age, eyecolor){
this.firstname = fname;
this.lastname = lname;
this.age = age;
this.eyecolor = eyecolor;
}
myFather = new person("John", "Doe", 50, "blue");
document.write(myFather.firstname + " is " + myFather.age + " years old.");
var Robot = {
metal: "Titanium",
killAllHumans: function(){
alert("Exterminate!");
}
};
Robot.killAllHumans();
var NewObject = {};
NewObject['property1'] = value;
NewObject['property2'] = value;
NewObject['method'] = function(){ /* function code here */ }
There is no best way, it depends on your use case.
Person
(you should start the name with a capital letter) is called the constructor function. This is similar to classes in other OO languages.Update: As requested examples for the third way.
Dependent properties:
The following does not work as this
does not refer to book
. There is no way to initialize a property with values of other properties in a object literal:
var book = {
price: somePrice * discount,
pages: 500,
pricePerPage: this.price / this.pages
};
instead, you could do:
var book = {
price: somePrice * discount,
pages: 500
};
book.pricePerPage = book.price / book.pages;
// or book['pricePerPage'] = book.price / book.pages;
Dynamic property names:
If the property name is stored in some variable or created through some expression, then you have to use bracket notation:
var name = 'propertyName';
// the property will be `name`, not `propertyName`
var obj = {
name: 42
};
// same here
obj.name = 42;
// this works, it will set `propertyName`
obj[name] = 42;