Question

A small question for versed javascript programmers: There are two ways to declare a function in javascript.

A: javascript-object-notation

function MyLittleHouseA(name) {
    this.age = 88,
    this.name = name,
    this.getName = function()
    {
        return this.name;
    }
}

B: uhm, normal:

function MyLittleHouseB(name) {
    this.age = 88;
    this.name = name;
    //do some more proceduaral stuff upon 'construction'
    this.age = this.age + 20; 
    this.getName = function()
    {
        return this.name;
    }
}

I find A more elegant (and have a number of objects I want to turn into configurable options…), but might want to do some more stuff upon instance creation, hence I do need as shown in B.

Can these be mixed?

¡ Thanx !

Answer 1

Your first option doesn’t use object notation. If you want to use object notation, you could write something like this:

function MyLittleHouse(name) {
    var age = 88;
    age += 20;
    return {
        getName: function() {
            return name;
        }
    }
}

This has the advantage of not using this, which means you avoid any issues with the binding of this. It also hides age and name, which may or may not be desirable — as it stands, there’s no way for age to be accessed, while name is immutable since it can only be read via getName. If you want to expose age as a normal field:

function MyLittleHouse(name) {
    var age = 88;
    age += 20;
    return {
        age: age,
        getName: function() {
            return name;
        }
    }
}