Hidden Features of JavaScript? [closed]

Answer 1

Be sure to use the hasOwnProperty method when iterating through an object's properties:

for (p in anObject) {
    if (anObject.hasOwnProperty(p)) {
        //Do stuff with p here
    }
}

This is done so that you will only access the direct properties of anObject, and not use the properties that are down the prototype chain.

Answer 2

To properly remove a property from an object, you should delete the property instead of just setting it to undefined:

var obj = { prop1: 42, prop2: 43 };

obj.prop2 = undefined;

for (var key in obj) {
    ...

The property prop2 will still be part of the iteration. If you want to completely get rid of prop2, you should instead do:

delete obj.prop2;

The property prop2 will no longer will make an appearance when you're iterating through the properties.

Answer 3

"Extension methods in JavaScript" via the prototype property.

Array.prototype.contains = function(value) {  
    for (var i = 0; i < this.length; i++) {  
        if (this[i] == value) return true;  
    }  
    return false;  
}

This will add a contains method to all Array objects. You can call this method using this syntax

var stringArray = ["foo", "bar", "foobar"];
stringArray.contains("foobar");

Answer 4

You don't need to define any parameters for a function. You can just use the function's arguments array-like object.

function sum() {
    var retval = 0;
    for (var i = 0, len = arguments.length; i < len; ++i) {
        retval += arguments[i];
    }
    return retval;
}

sum(1, 2, 3) // returns 6

Answer 5

Methods (or functions) can be called on object that are not of the type they were designed to work with. This is great to call native (fast) methods on custom objects.

var listNodes = document.getElementsByTagName('a');
listNodes.sort(function(a, b){ ... });

This code crashes because listNodes is not an Array

Array.prototype.sort.apply(listNodes, [function(a, b){ ... }]);

This code works because listNodes defines enough array-like properties (length, [] operator) to be used by sort().

Answer 6

Private Methods

An object can have private methods.

function Person(firstName, lastName) {
    this.firstName = firstName;
    this.lastName = lastName;

    // A private method only visible from within this constructor
    function calcFullName() {
       return firstName + " " + lastName;    
    }

    // A public method available to everyone
    this.sayHello = function () {
        alert(calcFullName());
    }
}

//Usage:
var person1 = new Person("Bob", "Loblaw");
person1.sayHello();

// This fails since the method is not visible from this scope
alert(person1.calcFullName());