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Start your free trialAlex Hort-Francis
17,074 PointsBest practice for declaring properties within a class?
In the video, Ashley declares the empty array tokens
in the constructor of the Player class.
Testing with the console in the browser, I can see that declaring it in the body of the class is also accepted: it returns a value when an object is instantiated.
I wonder what is considered best practice for declaring properties: declaring in the constructor method like this:
class Player {
constructor(){
this.tokens = [];
}
}
... or in the class body, like this:
class Player {
constructor(){}
tokens = [];
}
Obviously we wouldn't be able to pass in a value to the property upon instantiation unless it were declared in the constructor, but if we were planning to use a setter method to provide a value after instantiation instead then is there any benefit to declaring the empty property in the constructor method?
1 Answer
Steven Parker
231,275 PointsLike many things in programming, it's programmer's choice. But the 2nd form is a bit more concise, and it can be even more so if you leave off the definition of the empty constructor completely.
I might prefer the first form if there were to be other instance variables initiated in the constructor, just to keep them all together.
Alex Hort-Francis
17,074 PointsAlex Hort-Francis
17,074 PointsThat's a very good answer; I agree with your logic.
Ah so we don't technically need a constructor? Interesting.
Quite dynamic then, Javascript..