How to define method in javascript on Array.prototype and Object.prototype so that it doesn't appear in for in loop
It's quite easy: Don't use for-in loops with Arrays. Blame everybody else who does so - here is a nice snippet to tell them during development.
Of course, if one does an enumeration in a generic function and doesn't know whether he gets an array, a plain object or an object with a custom prototype, you can use hasOwnProperty
like this:
for (var prop in anyObj )
if (Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(anyObj, prop))
// do something
Notice the explicit use of Object.prototype
to get the function - there might be objects that overwrite it (especially in data-maps, the value might not even be a function), objects that do not support it or objects that do not inherit from Object.prototype at all. See also here.
Yet, only a script author who is aware of the problem would filter all his for-in-loops - and some only do it because it gets recommended - and does it mostly wrong, he should have used a for-loop array iteration instead. But our problem are those authors who do not know of it.
An interesting, but Mozilla-only approach would be overwriting the behavior of enumerations on arrays via __iterate__
, as demonstrated here.
Fortunately, EcmaScript 5.1 allows us setting properties to be non-enumerable. Of course, this is not supported in older browsers, but why bother? We'd need to use es5-shims anyway for all the cool higher-order array stuff :-) Use defineProperty
like this:
Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype, "find", {
enumerable: false,
writable: true,
value: function(testFun) {
// code to find element in array
}
});
Depending on your restrictions:
// In EcmaScript 5 specs and browsers that support it you can use the Object.defineProperty
// to make it not enumerable set the enumerable property to false
Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype, 'find', {
enumerable: false, // this will make it not iterable
get: function(testFun) {
// code to find element in array
};
});
Read more about Object.defineProperty here https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Object/defineProperty