Book Image

JavaScript from Beginner to Professional

By : Laurence Lars Svekis, Maaike van Putten, Codestars By Rob Percival
4 (5)
Book Image

JavaScript from Beginner to Professional

4 (5)
By: Laurence Lars Svekis, Maaike van Putten, Codestars By Rob Percival

Overview of this book

This book demonstrates the capabilities of JavaScript for web application development by combining theoretical learning with code exercises and fun projects that you can challenge yourself with. The guiding principle of the book is to show how straightforward JavaScript techniques can be used to make web apps ranging from dynamic websites to simple browser-based games. JavaScript from Beginner to Professional focuses on key programming concepts and Document Object Model manipulations that are used to solve common problems in professional web applications. These include data validation, manipulating the appearance of web pages, working with asynchronous and concurrent code. The book uses project-based learning to provide context for the theoretical components in a series of code examples that can be used as modules of an application, such as input validators, games, and simple animations. This will be supplemented with a brief crash course on HTML and CSS to illustrate how JavaScript components fit into a complete web application. As you learn the concepts, you can try them in your own editor or browser console to get a solid understanding of how they work and what they do. By the end of this JavaScript book, you will feel confident writing core JavaScript code and be equipped to progress to more advanced libraries, frameworks, and environments such as React, Angular, and Node.js.
Table of Contents (19 chapters)
16
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17
Index

Variable scope in functions

In this section, we will discuss a topic that is often considered challenging. We will talk about scope. Scope defines where you can access a certain variable. When a variable is in scope, you can access it. When a variable is out of scope, you cannot access the variable. We will discuss this for both local and global variables.

Local variables in functions

Local variables are only in scope within the function they are defined. This is true for let variables and var variables. There is a difference between them, which we will touch upon here as well. The function parameters (they do not use let or var) are also local variables. This might sound very vague, but the next code snippet will demonstrate what this means:

function testAvailability(x) {
  console.log("Available here:", x);
}
testAvailability("Hi!");
console.log("Not available here:", x);

This will output:

Available here: Hi!
ReferenceError: x is...