The Purple Blog

What is Object in JavaScript?

Taken from MDN to dmonstrate an example.

Objects overview

Objects in JavaScript, just as in many other programming languages, can be compared to objects in real life. The concept of objects in JavaScript can be understood with real life, tangible objects.

In JavaScript, an object is a standalone entity, with properties and type. Compare it with a cup, for example. A cup is an object, with properties. A cup has a color, a design, weight, a material it is made of, etc. The same way, JavaScript objects can have properties, which define their characteristics.

Objects and properties

A JavaScript object has properties associated with it. A property of an object can be explained as a variable that is attached to the object. Object properties are basically the same as ordinary JavaScript variables, except for the attachment to objects. The properties of an object define the characteristics of the object. You access the properties of an object with a simple dot-notation:

objectName.propertyName Like all JavaScript variables, both the object name (which could be a normal variable) and property name are case sensitive. You can define a property by assigning it a value. For example, let's create an object named myCar and give it properties named make, model, and year as follows:

var myCar = new Object();
myCar.make = 'Ford';
myCar.model = 'Mustang';
myCar.year = 1969;

The above example could also be written using an object initializer, which is a comma-delimited list of zero or more pairs of property names and associated values of an object, enclosed in curly braces ({}):

var myCar = {
    make: 'Ford',
    model: 'Mustang',
    year: 1969
};

Unassigned properties of an object are undefined (and not null).

myCar.color; // undefined

Properties of JavaScript objects can also be accessed or set using a bracket notation (for more details see property accessors). Objects are sometimes called associative arrays, since each property is associated with a string value that can be used to access it. So, for example, you could access the properties of the myCar object as follows:

myCar['make'] = 'Ford';
myCar['model'] = 'Mustang';
myCar['year'] = 1969;