JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 7th Edition

Chapter 9. Classes

JavaScript objects were covered in Chapter 6. That chapter treated each object as a unique set of properties, different from every other object. It is often useful, however, to define a class of objects that share certain properties. Members, or instances, of the class have their own properties to hold or define their state, but they also have methods that define their behavior. These methods are defined by the class and shared by all instances. Imagine a class named Complex that represents and performs arithmetic on complex numbers, for example. A Complex instance would have properties to hold the real and imaginary parts (the state) of the complex number. And the Complex class would define methods to perform addition and multiplication (the behavior) of those numbers.

In JavaScript, classes use prototype-based inheritance: if two objects inherit properties (generally function-valued properties, or methods) from the same prototype, then we say that those objects are instances of the same class. That, in a nutshell, is how JavaScript classes work. JavaScript prototypes and inheritance were covered in §6.2.3 and §6.3.2, and you will need to be familiar with the material in those sections to understand this chapter. This chapter covers prototypes in §9.1.

If two objects inherit from the same prototype, this typically (but not necessarily) means that they were created and initialized by the same constructor function or factory function. Constructors have been covered ...