Suppose I have the string:
var string = "function";
With
window[string];
I can call a function with the name of "function".
But, when I have:
var string2 = "function.method.weHaveTogoDeeper";
it should call
window["function"]["method"]["weHaveTogoDeeper"]
I can't do:
window[string2]
in this case. I dont know the number of "." in the string, so I need some kind of routine.
you can split the string across . by using the String.split method:
var string2 = "function.method.weHaveTogoDeeper";
var methods = string2.split(".");
In this examples, methods will be the array ["function","method","weHaveTogoDeeper"]. You should now be able to do a simple iteration over this array, calling each function on the result of the previous one.
Edit
The iteration I had in mind was something like this:
var result = window;
for(var i in methods) {
result = result[methods[i]];
}
In your example, result should now hold the same output as
window["function"]["method"]["weHaveTogoDeeper"]
function index(x,i) {return x[i]}
string2.split('.').reduce(index, window);
edit: Of course if you are calling functions from strings of their names, you are likely doing something inelegant which would be frowned upon, especially in a collaborative coding settings. The only use case I can think of that is sane is writing a testing framework, though there are probably a few more cases. So please use caution when following this answer; one should instead use arrays, or ideally direct references.
I wrote one a while back:
function RecursiveMapper(handlerName, stack) {
// check if empty string
if(!handlerName || handlerName === '' || (handlerName.replace(/\s/g,'') === '')) return null;
var buf = handlerName.split('.');
stack = stack || window;
return (buf.length === 1) ? stack[buf[0]] : this.RecursiveMapper(buf.slice(1).join('.'), stack[buf[0]]);
}
Call it like this: RecursiveMapper(window[string2]);
This one also checks if the function is defined in window scope first and returns the global one fi found.
Related
I am working with a Javascript code that uses eval function.
eval(myString)
The value of myString = myFunc(arg), I want to call myFunc directly without using eval.
I dont have any control over the function to call as I am getting that function as a String (here myString).
The arguments to that function is also part of the same string.
So, is there any way through which I can call the intended function without using eval?
I'm a bit skeptical of allowing users to provide function names at all, but... Assume you have the function name in a variable and the value of arg in a variable. Boom:
var myString = window[fn](arg);
arg is already presumably in an argument, so that's simple enough. The next part is exatracting the function name. Just a bit of regex:
var fn = /^([a-z0-9_]+)\(arg\)$/i.exec(str)[1];
if (fn && typeof window[fn] === 'function') {
window[fn](arg);
}
This does of course assume that the function is always in the global scope, but if it's not, you should be able to adjust accordingly for that. Also, my regex is just the first thing I came up with. It probably doesn't cover all possible function names.
If you wanted to limit the string to just a certain set of functions (and you almost certainly should), that becomes quite easy as well once you have the function name:
var allowedFunctions = {fn1: fn1, fn2: fn2, someOtherFunction: function() {} },
fn = /^([a-z0-9_]+)\(arg\)$/i.exec(str)[1];
if (fn && allowedFunctions[fn]) {
allowedFunctions[fn](arg);
} else {
// Hah, nice try.
}
(If arg isn't actually a variable name but is some kind of literal or perhaps an arbitrary expression, this gets a little more complicated and a lot less safe.)
JavaScript does not provide any way of calling a function represented as a string, other than using eval. There's nothing wrong about using it, though. Given that you have no other option.
Possibly you may try using Function:
var sure = function(s) {
return confirm(s);
};
var str = 'sure("Are you sure?")';
var rtn = new Function('return ' + str)();
alert(rtn);
I have feeling this must be a duplicate, but I've been unable to find anything, probably due to different wording, or just because there really is nothing better.
I am generating kind of huge chunk of JS code, which "ORs" object properties with variables, while identifiers don't necessarily match. It looks like this (values are boolean):
a.borderline = a.borderline || borderline;
a.st1 = a.st1 || st;
a.ref64 = a.ref64 || ref;
a.unfortunatelySometimesQuiteLongIndentifier123 = a.unfortunatelySometimesQuiteLongIndentifier123 || unfortunatelySometimesQuiteLongIndentifier;
...
To make it leaner I tried something like
a.st1 |= st;
but it makes a.st1 integer instead of boolean and I don't want to add another line with double negation to retype it back to boolean.
Using intuition I also tried ||=, which did not help :)
Is there any better (shorter) way of writing these commands?
Note: I cannot process the commands using a loop, because the commands are not executed all at once, instead they are spread in small chunks in the rest of the code (which was omitted for simplicity).
No, there is no shorthand OR operator in javascript. Coffeescript however does provide ||= and ?= to support this idiom.
Is there any better (shorter) way of writing these commands?
In your case, you're amending the a object instead of assigning to variables. You might do this in a loop fashion:
function amendWith(target, source)
for (var p in source)
if (!target[p])
target[p] = source[p];
return target;
}
amendWith(a, {
borderline: borderline,
st1: st,
ref64: ref,
unfortunatelySometimesQuiteLongIndentifier123: unfortunatelySometimesQuiteLongIndentifier
…
});
I'm not sure this is any shorter, but just as an alternative idea you could put the OR logic in a function and then loop through your values.
function myFunctionName(value1, value2) {
return value1 || value2;
}
//names are property names of object 'a' that you want to set, values are the alternate (default) values
var myMapping = {borderline:borderline, st1:st, reallyLongName123:reallyLongName};
for (temp in myMapping) {
a.temp = myFunctionName(a[temp], myMapping[temp]);
}
Since your unable to use a loop and you don't know all the values ahead of time, you could try adding the function to your object 'a'
a.test = function(propName, otherValue) {
this[propName] = this[propName] || otherValue;
};
a.test("borderline", borderline);
I'm trying to alert any JavaScript object as a string, in a function. This means if the parameter given to the function is window.document, the actual object, it should alert "window.document" (without quotes) as a literal string.
The following calls...
example(window);
example(window.document);
example(document.getElementById('something'));
...calling this function...
function example(o) {/* A little help here please? */}
...should output the following strings...
window
window.document
document.getElementById('something')
I've attempted to do this with combinations of toString() and eval() among some more miscellaneous shots in the dark without success.
No need insane backwards compatibility, newer ECMAScript / JavaScript features/functions are fine. Feel free to inquire for clarifications though the goal should be pretty straight forward.
This is not possible to do in a self contained script.
If using a preprocessor would be an option, then you could write one which converts example(whatever) into example('whatever'). Other than that I'm afraid you're out of luck.
The first problem is that objects don't have names.
The second problem is that from your examples, you're not really wanting to print the (nonexistent) name of an object, you want to print the expression that evaluated into a reference to an object. That's what you're trying to do in this example:
example(document.getElementById('something'));
For that to print document.getElementById('something'), JavaScript would have had to keep the actual text of that expression somewhere that it would make available to you. But it doesn't do that. It merely evaluates the parsed and compiled expression without reference to the original text of the expression.
If you were willing to quote the argument to example(), then of course it would be trivial:
example( "document.getElementById('something')" );
Obviously in this case you could either print the string directly, or eval() it to get the result of the expression.
OTOH, if you want to try a real hack, here's a trick you could use in some very limited circumstances:
function example( value ) {
var code = arguments.callee.caller.toString();
var match = code.match( /example\s*\(\s*(.*)\s*\)/ );
console.log( match && match[1] );
}
function test() {
var a = (1);
example( document.getElementById('body') );
var b = (2);
}
test();
This will print what you wanted:
document.getElementById('body')
(The assignments to a and b in the test() function are just there to verify that the regular expression isn't picking up too much code.)
But this will fail if there's more than one call to example() in the calling function, or if that call is split across more than one line. Also, arguments.callee.caller has been deprecated for some time but is still supported by most browsers as long as you're not in strict mode. I suppose this hack could be useful for some kind of debugging purposes though.
Don't know why you need this, but you can try walking the object tree recursively and compare its nodes with your argument:
function objectName(x) {
function search(x, context, path) {
if(x === context)
return path;
if(typeof context != "object" || seen.indexOf(context) >= 0)
return;
seen.push(context);
for(var p in context) {
var q = search(x, context[p], path + "." + p);
if(q)
return q;
}
}
var seen = [];
return search(x, window, "window");
}
Example:
console.log(objectName(document.body))
prints for me
window.document.activeElement
I know in javascript I can iterate over an object to get all of it's properties. If one or more of the properties is a method, is it possible to see what code is in the method instead of just the method name? E.g.
var a = someobject;
for (property in a) {
console.log(property);
}
Is it possible to get method code in a way similar to this? Thank you in advance.
You need to use toString, per the standard. i.e:
//EX:
var a = {method:function(x) { return x; }};
//gets the properties
for (x in a) {
console.log(a[x].toString());
}
You can also use toSource but it is NOT part of the standard.
PS: attempting to reliably iterate through an object with a for : loop is nontrivial and dangerous (for..in only iterates over [[Enumerable]] properties, for one), try to avoid such constructs. I would ask why, exactly, are you doing this?
Yes. It actually works. Try:
var a = {};
a.id = 'aaa';
a.fun = function(){alert('aaa');}
for (x in a) {
var current = a[x].toString();
if(current.indexOf('function') == 0){
current = current.substring(current.indexOf('{')+ 1, current.lastIndexOf('}'));
}
console.log(current);
}
But it will not work for browser native code.
You can use the toString method on the function
i.e.
function hello() {
var hi = "hello world";
alert(hi);
}
alert(hello.toString());
Update: The reason it wasn't working in JSFiddle was because I forgot to add the output inside of either console.log or alert - http://jsfiddle.net/pbojinov/mYqrY/
As long as a is an object, you should be able to use the square bracket notation and query a value from by argument with the same name as the objects property. For example:
a[ property ];
If you log typeof( property ), it will return "string" which is what we want.
I've seen something similar to this code in the Google API JavaScript, I mean the r=Array part. Here is an example of what they have done:
var r = Array;
var t = new r('sdsd' , 'sdsd');
alert(t[0]);
Few questions about this:
Is it legal to write like this and won't cause any problems?
I can do something similar with other keywords like ´For´ loop or with the ´this´ keyword?
Can I have article about this JavaScript official keyword shortcuts etc..?
Thank you in advance.
That works because Array is an object. You can do that with any object. For example, the Date object:
var d = Date;
console.log((new d()).getTime()); //Prints time
You cannot do that for keywords such as for or while because they are language constructs that will be recognised by the interpreter.
You can do it with this:
document.getElementById("b").onclick = function() {
var x = this; //this holds a reference to the DOM element that was clicked
x.value = "Clicked!";
}
In fact, that can be very useful sometimes (to keep a reference to this so you can access it from an anonymous inner function for example). This also works because, to put it simply, this will be a reference to an object.
Yes
for - no. this - yes.
You can store references to any JavaScript object in a variable. String, Array, Object, etc. are JavaScript objects that are built-in to the language. for, if, while, etc. are are JavaScript statements, and cannot be stored or referenced any other way.
You can do it the other way around as well (and really mess yourself up in the process):
Array = 0;
var myArray = new Array("a", "b", "c"); // throws error
This is easily undone like this:
Array = [].constructor;
Edit: Being able to assign the value of this to a variable is essential when nesting functions that will execute in a different scope:
function Widget() {
var that = this;
this.IsThis = function() {
return isThis();
};
function isThis() {
return that == this;
}
}
new Widget().IsThis(); // false!
Maybe not the best example, but illustrates losing scope.
You cannot reassign the value of this:
function doSomething() {
this = 0; // throws error
}