How do you make classes in JavaScript?

Question

How do you guys make "classes" in JavaScript!?

I am using:

function classFoo()
{
   var classLevelVariable = 0;

   this.classFunction = function()
   {
      alert("The classFunction has been called.");
      classFunction2(); //Crash.  classFunction2 is "undefined."  
   }

   this.classFunction2 = function()
   {
      alert("classFunction2 called.");
   }
}

I never was able to get constructors to work. Tried

this.New = function(arguments)

Which worked once, but not in a second class. So, I have now given up on those entirely, using my own "Initialize" functions which act as constructors.

The weirdness with it working once, but not twice, makes me think typographical errors between the two classes... but I think in 19 years of coding, that that probably isn't it.

I'm using Chrome's debugger, and I am not receiving any errors besides the second function being undefined when being called.

Answer 1

Javascript does not use class-based inheritance. So, you can't make classes in Javascript, except to emulate them using workarounds that are IMHO clumsy and complicated.

Javascript is a prototypal language. Using the new keyword creates a new object based on the prototype property of the constructor object.

You can get an idea how you might use prototypal inheritance to instantiate a new object based on a prototypal object here: http://javascript.crockford.com/prototypal.html

Answer 2

I feel that your original rant (see question's revision history) deserves a response. It's very much against the spirit of programming and computer science, in my opinion, to declare a language broken merely because you can't make it go.

Please pardon me if I offend you when I say that I'm surprised that they can give CS degrees out to people with such paradigmatic ignorance. When I went to school, which was only about 5 years ago, I did my assignments in 6 different languages: MIPS, Verilog, Scheme, Java, C/C++ and Python. We used many paradigms, including functional and OOP but other styles as well. If you were not exposed to these different perspectives, none of which are new, your education is not complete.

Has it occurred to you that what you consider to be canonical OOP is merely one formulation of the OOP principles? In Javascript objects instantiate from a "prototype," and it's not the same thing as a class. When you expect it to work like a class-based OOP language, it will not meet your expectations. Java and C++ are not the gold standard of OOP, nor is OOP the be-all-end-all of programming.

When one considers the amazing apps that have been written in Javascript in the past 3-5 years, it's amazing that a person can make a statement like this:

One would think we would apply our best coding practices over the last six decades into it. No. Of course not. What do we have? Functions inside of functions... some weird bastardization of classes. Complete with no consistency...

To say that, despite the brilliant achievements made by teams of brilliant Javascript developers, the language is broken because you have difficulty understanding it is, well, astonishing.

Please consider that, instead of the language being flawed, you may not presently possess the perspective necessary to understand it.

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PS, You mentioned that you are "using JavaScript to AVOID FLASH!" It seems like you have a very poor strategy for ascertaining facts, since Javascript and Actionscript both implement the same spec: ECMAScript.