JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 7th Edition

Chapter 6. Objects

Objects are JavaScript’s most fundamental datatype, and you have already seen them many times in the chapters that precede this one. Because objects are so important to the JavaScript language, it is important that you understand how they work in detail, and this chapter provides that detail. It begins with a formal overview of objects, then dives into practical sections about creating objects and querying, setting, deleting, testing, and enumerating the properties of objects. These property-focused sections are followed by sections that explain how to extend, serialize, and define important methods on objects. Finally, the chapter concludes with a long section about new object literal syntax in ES6 and more recent versions of the language.

6.1 Introduction to Objects

An object is a composite value: it aggregates multiple values (primitive values or other objects) and allows you to store and retrieve those values by name. An object is an unordered collection of properties, each of which has a name and a value. Property names are usually strings (although, as we’ll see in §6.10.3, property names can also be Symbols), so we can say that objects map strings to values. This string-to-value mapping goes by various names—you are probably already familiar with the fundamental data structure under the name “hash,” “hashtable,” “dictionary,” or “associative array.” An object is more than a simple string-to-value map, however. In addition to maintaining its own set of ...