What is the Javascript equivalent of Python's get method for dictionaries

Question

Python's get method for dictionaries lets me specify what should be returned if a key doesn't exist. For my current case I want a dictionary returned. How do I do this in Javascript?

Answer 1

There is no javascript equivalent of the python dictionary get method. If you would write it yourself, as a function, it would look like this:

function get(object, key, default_value) {     var result = object[key];     return (typeof result !== "undefined") ? result : default_value; } 

Use it like:

var obj = {"a": 1}; get(obj, "a", 2); // -> 1 get(obj, "b", 2); // -> 2 

Note that the requested key will also be found in a prototype of obj.

If you really want a method rather than a function (obj.get("a", 2)), you need to extend the prototype of Object. This is generally considered a bad idea though, see Extending Object.prototype JavaScript