How to know if class constructor was called via super?

Question

If I have this:

class Human {
    constructor(){

    }
}

class Person extends Human {
    constructor(){
        super();
    }
}

Is it possible to know if the Human's constructor was called via the Person class? I thought about arguments.callee but that is deprecated.

Answer 1

It's easy (but ill-advised) to check whether the instance is of a particular subclasss:

class Human {
    constructor(){
        console.log(this instanceof Person);
    }
}

To check whether it's an instance of the base class (and not a subclass) you can use:

Object.getPrototypeOf(this) === Human.prototype

[ so long as you haven't messed with the class and overwritten the prototype object ]

You can also check the value of this.constructor.name - it'll reflect the type of the initial constructor called, and doesn't change when the base class constructor is called, although this could fail if the code is minified.