JavaScript Class Template

In an ongoing effort to make my javascript code not look like trash, I’ve compiled the following template for all of my class files. It allows for static, private, privileged, and public methods and properties. It’s a bit of an overkill because I wanted to account for everything.

Due to the nature of the private and privileged methods and variables, these will take up memory for every instance of the class (they are not part of the prototype) and they will not allow for inheritance. I find the tradeoff for encapsulation more important than inheritance which is much more rare in JavaScript. Of course, if the class is going to end up with a bajillion instances, you’d better rely primarily on the Publics.

It’s important to take a moment to explain the scope of each of these method types since JavaScript is infamous for its issues on that front. First, public methods can only access other publics and privileged methods and properties. Privileged methods can access public, privileged and private methods and properties. Private methods can also access any of the types. The limitation from the publics is related to their definition in the prototype. Finally, the line “var that = this;” allows for private and privileged methods to access the “this” scope of the class. Due to a weird issue with scope inside closures, normally accessing “this” inside one of those methods would fail.

I don’t like how I’m forced to write my getters and setters currently. There’s the “definegetter” option, but from what I’ve read it isn’t standardized and might not work everywhere. Does anyone have experience with this?

The semicolon at the beginning takes care of any improperly terminated statements that might preface this class and cause it to poop out. Thanks to Dave Hamp for that idea!

Finally, everything is wrapped in a function to preserve scope.

You can grab the latest version of this template from GitHub.