Question

Is it possible to construct an object in a way to return the following:

baseObject.foo;   // return a string describing what foo does
baseObject.foo(); // execute the foo function

baseObject.bar;   // bar description
baseObject.bar(); // execute bar

Update: JavaScript Method Overloading is close, but not quite what I’m looking for.

Update2: jsfiddle (of solutions provided below).

Answer 1

baseObject.foo has to be a function, otherwise you won’t be able to call it. The only thing you can influence is how this function is coerced to a string, by overriding its toString() method. By default toString() returns function source code, you can make it return something else instead.

baseObject.foo = function() {
    // Do something
}
baseObject.foo.toString = function() {
    return "Function does something";
}
alert(baseObject.foo);