Javascript won't let me set property which only has a getter despite deleting getter

Question

I have the following getter in one of my classes:

get password(){
        if(this._public) return null;

        var text = "";
        var possible = "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";    
        for (var i = 0; i < 10; i++) {
            text += possible.charAt(Math.floor(Math.random() * possible.length));   
        }

        delete this.password;
        return this.password = text;
}

There is no accompanying setter. On the line return this.password = text I get this error:

Uncaught TypeError: Cannot set property password of # which has only a getter

However, the getter should be deleted at this point, and it should have no property called password. I actually took the idea from MDN's page here (the last code snippet on the page).

Anyone know why this is happening?

Tested on Chrome 51 and Node.js (v6.0.0).

Answer 1

As said in comments, you can't delete what isn't there. password is not a property of user, but of its prototype; so delete user.password does nothing; if you then do user.password = "foo", you will find the property user on the prototype, which is not settable.

Instead, you need to define a property on user itself:

class User {
  get password() {
    Object.defineProperty(this, "password", {
      value: "foo"
    });
    return this.password;
  }
};

var user = new User();
console.log(user.password);