JavaScript: The Good Parts

JavaScript: The Good Parts

Released May 2008
Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
ISBN: 9780596517748

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Book description

Most programming languages contain good and bad parts, but JavaScript has more than its share of the bad, having been developed and released in a hurry before it could be refined. This authoritative book scrapes away these bad features to reveal a subset of JavaScript that's more reliable, readable, and maintainable than the language as a whole-a subset you can use to create truly extensible and efficient code. Considered the JavaScript expert by many people in the development community, author Douglas Crockford identifies the abundance of good ideas that make JavaScript an outstanding object-oriented programming language-ideas such as functions, loose typing, dynamic objects, and an expressive object literal notation. Unfortunately, these good ideas are mixed in with bad and downright awful ideas, like a programming model based on global variables. When Java applets failed, JavaScript became the language of the Web by default, making its popularity almost completely independent of its qualities as a programming language. In JavaScript: The Good Parts, Crockford finally digs through the steaming pile of good intentions and blunders to give you a detailed look at all the genuinely elegant parts of JavaScript, including:

  • Syntax

  • Objects

  • Functions

  • Inheritance

  • Arrays

  • Regular expressions

  • Methods

  • Style

  • Beautiful features

The real beauty? As you move ahead with the subset of JavaScript that this book presents, you'll also sidestep the need to unlearn all the bad parts. Of course, if you want to find out more about the bad parts and how to use them badly, simply consult any other JavaScript book.

With JavaScript: The Good Parts, you'll discover a beautiful, elegant, lightweight and highly expressive language that lets you create effective code, whether you're managing object libraries or just trying to get Ajax to run fast. If you develop sites or applications for the Web, this book is an absolute must.

Table of contents

  1. JavaScript: The Good Parts
    1. SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly
    2. A Note Regarding Supplemental Files
    3. Preface
      1. Conventions Used in This Book
      2. Using Code Examples
      3. Safari® Books Online
      4. How to Contact Us
      5. Acknowledgments
    4. 1. Good Parts
      1. Why JavaScript?
      2. Analyzing JavaScript
      3. A Simple Testing Ground
    5. 2. Grammar
      1. Whitespace
      2. Names
      3. Numbers
      4. Strings
      5. Statements
      6. Expressions
      7. Literals
      8. Functions
    6. 3. Objects
      1. Object Literals
      2. Retrieval
      3. Update
      4. Reference
      5. Prototype
      6. Reflection
      7. Enumeration
      8. Delete
      9. Global Abatement
    7. 4. Functions
      1. Function Objects
      2. Function Literal
      3. Invocation
        1. The Method Invocation Pattern
        2. The Function Invocation Pattern
        3. The Constructor Invocation Pattern
        4. The Apply Invocation Pattern
      4. Arguments
      5. Return
      6. Exceptions
      7. Augmenting Types
      8. Recursion
      9. Scope
      10. Closure
      11. Callbacks
      12. Module
      13. Cascade
      14. Curry
      15. Memoization
    8. 5. Inheritance
      1. Pseudoclassical
      2. Object Specifiers
      3. Prototypal
      4. Functional
      5. Parts
    9. 6. Arrays
      1. Array Literals
      2. Length
      3. Delete
      4. Enumeration
      5. Confusion
      6. Methods
      7. Dimensions
    10. 7. Regular Expressions
      1. An Example
      2. Construction
      3. Elements
        1. Regexp Choice
        2. Regexp Sequence
        3. Regexp Factor
        4. Regexp Escape
        5. Regexp Group
        6. Regexp Class
        7. Regexp Class Escape
        8. Regexp Quantifier
    11. 8. Methods
    12. 9. Style
    13. 10. Beautiful Features
    14. A. Awful Parts
      1. Global Variables
      2. Scope
      3. Semicolon Insertion
      4. Reserved Words
      5. Unicode
      6. typeof
      7. parseInt
      8. +
      9. Floating Point
      10. NaN
      11. Phony Arrays
      12. Falsy Values
      13. hasOwnProperty
      14. Object
    15. B. Bad Parts
      1. ==
      2. with Statement
      3. eval
      4. continue Statement
      5. switch Fall Through
      6. Block-less Statements
      7. ++ −−
      8. Bitwise Operators
      9. The function Statement Versus the function Expression
      10. Typed Wrappers
      11. new
      12. void
    16. C. JSLint
      1. Undefined Variables and Functions
      2. Members
      3. Options
      4. Semicolon
      5. Line Breaking
      6. Comma
      7. Required Blocks
      8. Forbidden Blocks
      9. Expression Statements
      10. for in Statement
      11. switch Statement
      12. var Statement
      13. with Statement
      14. =
      15. == and !=
      16. Labels
      17. Unreachable Code
      18. Confusing Pluses and Minuses
      19. ++ and −−
      20. Bitwise Operators
      21. eval Is Evil
      22. void
      23. Regular Expressions
      24. Constructors and new
      25. Not Looked For
      26. HTML
      27. JSON
      28. Report
    17. D. Syntax Diagrams
    18. E. JSON
      1. JSON Syntax
      2. Using JSON Securely
      3. A JSON Parser
    19. Index
    20. About the Author
    21. Colophon
    22. SPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’Reilly

Product information

  • Title: JavaScript: The Good Parts
  • Author(s):
  • Release date: May 2008
  • Publisher(s): O'Reilly Media, Inc.
  • ISBN: 9780596517748