How to use anonymous objects

I don’t know how to call it and I don’t even know if it has a name. I thought a moment about calling it Mistigri but I already have a cat with that name. I decided to call it anonymous object.

How?

[source:javascript]

var ao = {
name : “Anonymous Object”,
possibleName : “Mistigri”,
presentYourself : function() {
alert(”Hi! My name is ” + this.name + ” but they thought of calling me ”
+ this.possibleName + “.”);
}

ao.presentYourself();

[/source]

By running the code below, you should see a message box with Hi! My name is Anonymous Object but they thought of calling me Mistigri. Isn’t it wonderful?

What can I do with that?

For the moment, I haven’t found a lot of uses for anonymous objects. If you know more, leave a comment and I will add yours to mine. Maybe we’ll end up with two and a half diffrent uses.

Still, I am using it to create enumerations (enum).
[source:javascript]
var DisplayType = {
big : 0,
medium : 1,
small : 2
}

var display = DisplayType.big;
alert(display);
[/source]

This is very useful instead of creating “constants” with different name.

[source:javascript]

var DISPLAY_TYPE_BIG = 0;
var DISPLAY_TYPE_MEDIUM = 1;
var DISPLAY_TYPE_SMALL = 2;

[/source]

Second use

Nicolás Sanguinetti pointed to me another use of anonymous objects.

Saying you have a lot of possible parameters to pass to a method. Instead of having them all list, you use an anonymous object as parameters and the programmer decides which one he will use.

Instead of

[source:javascript]
function doSomething(id, name, label, age, fatherName, brotherName, motherName, grandmaName, isFunny, isShy)
{
var concat = id + ” ” + label + ” ” + isFunny;

// More code…
}

doSomething(2, null, “name”, null, null, null, null, null, true, null);
[/source]

you have

[source:javascript]
function doSomething(params)
{
var concat = params.id + ” ” + params.label + ” ” + params.isFunny;

// More code…
}

doSomething({id : 2, label : “name”, isFunny: true});
[/source]