March 16, 2001 - Defining an Object's Methods with Anonymous Functions

March 16, 2001 Defining an Object's Methods with Anonymous Functions Tips: March 2001 Yehuda Shiran, Ph.D. Doc JavaScript

function Employee() {
  this.dept = "HR";
  this.manager = "John Johnson";
}

When you create an object, it automatically inherits all Object's properties (constructor, toString(), hasOwnProperty(), etc.) You can add properties to the object by attaching them to the this value within the constructor function, as shown above. As for the methods, there are three different ways to define them. One of them calls for anonymous function creation, inside the constructor function. Anonymous function is defined without a name. Let's define a method, setRegisterA():

function Employee() {
  var registerA = "Initial Value";
  this.setRegisterA = function(param) { registerA = param };
  this.dept = "HR";
  this.manager = "John Johnson";
}

Let's use it now. First, create a variable of class Employee:

var Ken = new Employee;

And then store a new value in Register A:

Ken.setRegisterA("new value stored in 010315");