Defining JavaScript functions inside vs. outside of a class
From the MDN doc:
JavaScript classes, introduced in ECMAScript 2015, are primarily syntactical sugar over JavaScript's existing prototype-based inheritance. The class syntax does not introduce a new object-oriented inheritance model to JavaScript.
So this...
class TestClass {
constructor(myName) {
this.name = myName;
}
getName() {
return this.name;
}
static getName2() {
return 'getName2 result';
}
}
...is exactly equivalent to this:
const TestClass = function(myName) {
this.name = myName;
}
TestClass.prototype.getName = function() {
return this.name;
}
TestClass.getName2 = function() {
return 'getName2 result';
}
So whether you use the older prototype syntax or the newer ES6 class
syntax is just a matter of personal preference, and as you suspected, defining methods directly on a class
is exactly equivalent to creating a static
class method.