Book Image

Clean Code in JavaScript

By : James Padolsey
Book Image

Clean Code in JavaScript

By: James Padolsey

Overview of this book

Building robust apps starts with creating clean code. In this book, you’ll explore techniques for doing this by learning everything from the basics of JavaScript through to the practices of clean code. You’ll write functional, intuitive, and maintainable code while also understanding how your code affects the end user and the wider community. The book starts with popular clean-coding principles such as SOLID, and the Law of Demeter (LoD), along with highlighting the enemies of writing clean code such as cargo culting and over-management. You’ll then delve into JavaScript, understanding the more complex aspects of the language. Next, you’ll create meaningful abstractions using design patterns, such as the Class Pattern and the Revealing Module Pattern. You’ll explore real-world challenges such as DOM reconciliation, state management, dependency management, and security, both within browser and server environments. Later, you’ll cover tooling and testing methodologies and the importance of documenting code. Finally, the book will focus on advocacy and good communication for improving code cleanliness within teams or workplaces, along with covering a case study for clean coding. By the end of this book, you’ll be well-versed with JavaScript and have learned how to create clean abstractions, test them, and communicate about them via documentation.
Table of Contents (26 chapters)
1
Section 1: What is Clean Code Anyway?
7
Section 2: JavaScript and Its Bits
13
Section 3: Crafting Abstractions
16
Section 4: Testing and Tooling
20
Section 5: Collaboration and Making Changes

Functions

Functions in JavaScript are like any other type; they can be passed around just like objects and primitive types. When we talk about most other values, however, we see that there is usually only one way to literally declare them. Object literals are declared using braces. Array literals are delimited square brackets. Functions, however, come in a variety of literal forms.

When outside of an object literal or class definition, you can declare a function in three different ways: as a function declaration, as a function expression, or as a fat-arrow function expression:

// Function Declaration
function myFunction() {}

// Function Expression
const myFunction = function () {};

// Named Function Expression
const myFunction = function myFunction() {};

// "Fat"-Arrow Function Expression
const myFunction = () => {};

When declaring functions inside object literals, however...