JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 5th Edition

Chapter 9. Classes, Constructors, and Prototypes

JavaScript objects were introduced in Chapter 7. That chapter treated each object as a unique set of properties, different from every other object. In many object-oriented programming languages, it is possible to define a class of objects and then create individual objects that are instances of that class. You might define a class named Complex to represent and perform arithmetic on complex numbers, for example. A Complex object would represent a single complex number and would be an instance of that class.

JavaScript does not support true classes the way that languages like Java, C++, and C# do.^[*] Still, however, it is possible to define pseudoclasses in JavaScript. The tools for doing this are constructor functions and prototype objects. This chapter explains constructors and prototypes and includes examples of several JavaScript pseudo-classes and even pseudosubclasses.

For lack of a better term, I use the word “class” informally in this chapter. Be careful, however, that you don’t confuse these informal classes with the true classes of JavaScript 2 and other languages.

Constructors

Chapter 7 showed you how to create a new, empty object either with the object literal {} or with the following expression:

new Object( )

You have also seen other kinds of JavaScript objects created with a similar syntax:

var array = new Array(10);
var today = new Date( );

The new operator must be followed by a function invocation. It creates a new object, ...