JavaScript Magic Objects

[u/noeldemartin]

https://noeldemartin.com/blog/programming-patterns-magic-objects

I just published a blog post to my website about a pattern I've been using for a while that I think you will find interesting (and probably very divisive!): Magic Objects.

class Parrot extends MagicObject {
    __get(property) {
        return `${property}! ${property}!`;
    }
}

const parrot = new Parrot();

console.log(parrot.foo); // "foo! foo!"
console.log(parrot.bar); // "bar! bar!"

Basically, I'm borrowing the idea of Magic Methods from PHP and porting them to JavaScript. You've probably seen something like this done with proxies before, but I still like to use some OOP in my JavaScript, and I also came up with a way to make it work nicely with TypeScript.

It may seem a bit over the top at the beginning, but I've been using this for a while and I've found it very useful.

Let me know what you think!

[u/javascript]

Proxy Objects (getters and setters) have been around for a while but I've yet to come across a use case where they were the right choice. They tend to work more as an escape hatch.

[u/jhartikainen → u/javascript]

It seems potentially valuable in some kind of framework/infra code. Svelte uses them for its $state runes for example. But yeah, like generators, I've not really found any use for them myself.

[u/javascript → u/jhartikainen]

Oh ya generators haha. I was so bewildered by the `function*` syntax when I first learned it. What a wild land grab for such a niche feature.

[u/svish → u/javascript]

Generators are awesome, but unfortunately handicapped still. Not being able to filter, map, reduce, and so on directly on a generator makes them annoying and the moment you have to put all the items in a fixed length array, you kind of miss several of the advantages.

[u/sharlos → u/svish]

I think they've added sync versions of map, filter, etc, with async versions on the way.

[u/svish → u/sharlos]

Yeah, think they're working on it, but really, it should've come at the same time as generators themselves.