ES6 class variable alternatives

Question

Currently in ES5 many of us are using the following pattern in frameworks to create classes and class variables, which is comfy:

Answer 1

Since your issue is mostly stylistic (not wanting to fill up the constructor with a bunch of declarations) it can be solved stylistically as well.

The way I view it, many class based languages have the constructor be a function named after the class name itself. Stylistically we could use that that to make an ES6 class that stylistically still makes sense but does not group the typical actions taking place in the constructor with all the property declarations we're doing. We simply use the actual JS constructor as the "declaration area", then make a class named function that we otherwise treat as the "other constructor stuff" area, calling it at the end of the true constructor.

"use strict";

class MyClass
{
    // only declare your properties and then call this.ClassName(); from here
    constructor(){
        this.prop1 = 'blah 1';
        this.prop2 = 'blah 2';
        this.prop3 = 'blah 3';
        this.MyClass();
    }

    // all sorts of other "constructor" stuff, no longer jumbled with declarations
    MyClass() {
        doWhatever();
    }
}

Both will be called as the new instance is constructed.

Sorta like having 2 constructors where you separate out the declarations and the other constructor actions you want to take, and stylistically makes it not too hard to understand that's what is going on too.

I find it's a nice style to use when dealing with a lot of declarations and/or a lot of actions needing to happen on instantiation and wanting to keep the two ideas distinct from each other.

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NOTE: I very purposefully do not use the typical idiomatic ideas of "initializing" (like an init() or initialize() method) because those are often used differently. There is a sort of presumed difference between the idea of constructing and initializing. Working with constructors people know that they're called automatically as part of instantiation. Seeing an init method many people are going to assume without a second glance that they need to be doing something along the form of var mc = MyClass(); mc.init();, because that's how you typically initialize. I'm not trying to add an initialization process for the user of the class, I'm trying to add to the construction process of the class itself.

While some people may do a double-take for a moment, that's actually the bit of the point: it communicates to them that the intent is part of construction, even if that makes them do a bit of a double take and go "that's not how ES6 constructors work" and take a second looking at the actual constructor to go "oh, they call it at the bottom, I see", that's far better than NOT communicating that intent (or incorrectly communicating it) and probably getting a lot of people using it wrong, trying to initialize it from the outside and junk. That's very much intentional to the pattern I suggest.

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For those that don't want to follow that pattern, the exact opposite can work too. Farm the declarations out to another function at the beginning. Maybe name it "properties" or "publicProperties" or something. Then put the rest of the stuff in the normal constructor.

"use strict";

class MyClass
{
    properties() {
        this.prop1 = 'blah 1';
        this.prop2 = 'blah 2';
        this.prop3 = 'blah 3';
    }

    constructor() {
        this.properties();
        doWhatever();
    }
}

Note that this second method may look cleaner but it also has an inherent problem where properties gets overridden as one class using this method extends another. You'd have to give more unique names to properties to avoid that. My first method does not have this problem because its fake half of the constructor is uniquely named after the class.