Book Image

The JavaScript Workshop

By : Joseph Labrecque, Jahred Love, Daniel Rosenbaum, Nick Turner, Gaurav Mehla, Alonzo L. Hosford, Florian Sloot, Philip Kirkbride
Book Image

The JavaScript Workshop

By: Joseph Labrecque, Jahred Love, Daniel Rosenbaum, Nick Turner, Gaurav Mehla, Alonzo L. Hosford, Florian Sloot, Philip Kirkbride

Overview of this book

If you're looking for a programming language to develop flexible and efficient apps, JavaScript is a great choice. However, while offering real benefits, the complexity of the entire JavaScript ecosystem can be overwhelming. This Workshop is a smarter way to learn JavaScript. It is specifically designed to cut through the noise and help build your JavaScript skills from scratch, while sparking your interest with engaging activities and clear explanations. Starting with explanations of JavaScript's fundamental programming concepts, this book will introduce the key tools, libraries and frameworks that programmers use in everyday development. You will then move on and see how to handle data, control the flow of information in an application, and create custom events. You'll explore the differences between client-side and server-side JavaScript, and expand your knowledge further by studying the different JavaScript development paradigms, including object-oriented and functional programming. By the end of this JavaScript book, you'll have the confidence and skills to tackle real-world JavaScript development problems that reflect the emerging requirements of the modern web.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)

Working with Objects

In JavaScript, objects are the primary configurable data structures from which all other complex data types extend, including Array and Date. Objects work like a hash map; they contain key/value properties that can contain any data type, including functions and other objects.

An object is defined using curly braces, much like a block:

var myObject = {};

The values that are added to an object are "members" of that object. Those members are accessible using dot notation:

var myObject = {foo: "bar"};
console.log(myObject.foo);
// =>  "bar"

The key of a property may be specified with or without quotes. However, the result is exactly the same:

var myObject = {param1: 1, "param2": 2};

JavaScript is known as a prototype language, which means its object-oriented capabilities are provided by prototyping values to objects prior to instantiation. As such, JavaScript objects support the prototype keyword...