Object spread vs. Object.assign

Question

Let’s say I have an options variable and I want to set some default value.

What’s is the benefit / drawback of these two alternatives?

Using object spread

options = {...optionsDefault, ...options}; 

Or using Object.assign

options = Object.assign({}, optionsDefault, options); 

This is the commit that made me wonder.

Answer 1

This isn't necessarily exhaustive.

Spread syntax

options = {...optionsDefault, ...options}; 

Advantages:

• If authoring code for execution in environments without native support, you may be able to just compile this syntax (as opposed to using a polyfill). (With Babel, for example.)

• Less verbose.

Disadvantages:

• When this answer was originally written, this was a proposal, not standardized. When using proposals consider what you'd do if you write code with it now and it doesn't get standardized or changes as it moves toward standardization. This has since been standardized in ES2018.

• Literal, not dynamic.

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Object.assign()

options = Object.assign({}, optionsDefault, options); 

Advantages:

• Standardized.

• Dynamic. Example:

  var sources = [{a: "A"}, {b: "B"}, {c: "C"}]; options = Object.assign.apply(Object, [{}].concat(sources)); // or options = Object.assign({}, ...sources); 

Disadvantages:

• More verbose.
• If authoring code for execution in environments without native support you need to polyfill.

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This is the commit that made me wonder.

That's not directly related to what you're asking. That code wasn't using Object.assign(), it was using user code (object-assign) that does the same thing. They appear to be compiling that code with Babel (and bundling it with Webpack), which is what I was talking about: the syntax you can just compile. They apparently preferred that to having to include object-assign as a dependency that would go into their build.

Answer 2

For reference object rest/spread is finalised in ECMAScript 2018 as a stage 4. The proposal can be found here.

For the most part object reset and spread work the same way, the key difference is that spread defines properties, whilst Object.assign() sets them. This means Object.assign() triggers setters.

It's worth remembering that other than this, object rest/spread 1:1 maps to Object.assign() and acts differently to array (iterable) spread. For example, when spreading an array null values are spread. However using object spread null values are silently spread to nothing.

Array (Iterable) Spread Example

const x = [1, 2, null , 3]; const y = [...x, 4, 5]; const z = null;  console.log(y); // [1, 2, null, 3, 4, 5]; console.log([...z]); // TypeError 

Object Spread Example

const x = null; const y = {a: 1, b: 2}; const z = {...x, ...y};  console.log(z); //{a: 1, b: 2} 

This is consistent with how Object.assign() would work, both silently exclude the null value with no error.

const x = null; const y = {a: 1, b: 2}; const z = Object.assign({}, x, y);  console.log(z); //{a: 1, b: 2}