Object Methods

As discussed earlier, all JavaScript objects (except those explicitly created without a prototype) inherit properties from Object.prototype. These inherited properties are primarily methods, and because they are universally available, they are of particular interest to JavaScript programmers. We’ve already seen the hasOwnProperty(), propertyIsEnumerable(), and isPrototypeOf() methods. (And we’ve also already covered quite a few static functions defined on the Object constructor, such as Object.create() and Object.getPrototypeOf().) This section explains a handful of universal object methods that are defined on Object.prototype, but which are intended to be overridden by other, more specialized classes.

The toString() Method

The toString() method takes no arguments; it returns a string that somehow represents the value of the object on which it is invoked. JavaScript invokes this method of an object whenever it needs to convert the object to a string. This occurs, for example, when you use the + operator to concatenate a string with an object or when you pass an object to a method that expects a string.

The default toString() method is not very informative (though it is useful for determining the class of an object, as we saw in The class Attribute). For example, the following line of code simply evaluates to the string “[object Object]”:

var s = { x:1, y:1 }.toString();

Because this default method does not display much useful information, many classes define their own ...

Get JavaScript: The Definitive Guide, 6th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.