OOP vs JavaScript

Question

I have a background in OOP. I started to work a lot with JavaScript. As the project grows it's becoming more difficult to maintain it. In Java I apply OOP principles to keep things under control. What should I do with JavaScript, what should I study that is aimed at keeping a JavaScript application under control?

Answer 1

You can apply OOP principles to Javascript development too. Javascript uses prototypal inheritance, but that is an implementation detail. The concepts are still the same. Most of the concepts with which you are familiar have direct analogues in javascript.

Other tried and true methods apply as well:

1) Stay DRY -- Do not Repeat Yourself. Duplicate code is always evil.
2) Separate concerns -- Use the MVC or MVVM patterns to keep code clean and doing only 1 thing.
3) Test -- When I hear "Difficult to maintain" my brain translates that into lack of tests. You can certainly write unit tests for javascript projects.
4) Code Review -- Code reviews can be a good way of rejecting duplicated code, code that is not crafted properly, not formatted, etc....

Answer 2

This is how you define objects and methods in javascript.

function SomeObj() {

    this.someMethod = function() {
        alert('boo');
    }
}

var o_obj = new SomeObj();
o_obj.someMethod(); //alerts "boo"

Hope it helps.

You can also use prototype to create static functions.

this.prototype.someMethod = function() {
    alert('boo');
}