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Using literals

Array literals

In JavaScript you can define an array like this:

var a = new Array();

A better pattern to do so is by using the array literal, basically a comma-delimited list of values, wrapped in square brackets:

var a = []; // array with no elements
var a = [1, 2, 3]; // array with three elements
var a = [[1, 2, 3], ['a', 'b', 'c']]; // array of two arrays

Object literals

Similarly, an empty object can be defined as:

var o = new Object();

A much better pattern is to use the object literal:

var o = {}; // empty object
var o = {p: 'one'}; // object with a "p" property
var o = { 
  prop: 1,  // a property
  meth: function() { // a method
    alert('Boo!');
  }
};

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This entry was posted on Monday, September 14th, 2009 and is filed under Object creation patterns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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