Getters and setters

Question

What is the point of getter and setters? Aren't they just simply methods on an object? Clarification on this would be extremely helpful!

Answer 1 · 2017-04-09T21:06:46Z

April 9, 2017 9:06pm

Hello!

Indeed, getters and setters are just methods (functions) under the hood. But the point is that they look like normal properties when you use them.

On reason you might want to do this is instead of defining for example two methods such as (getFullName) and (setFullName). You could just have one getter / setter just called (fullName). So, its just a bit of neat-ness or syntactic sugar.

Consider this example:

// Define a simple object, person
var person = {
    firstName: 'John',
    lastName: 'Smith'
}

// Dont worry about this syntax. This is the old ES5 way do define getters and setters.
Object.defineProperty(person, 'fullName', {
    get: function() {
        return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName;
    },
    set: function(aName) {
        var names = aName.split(' ');

        this.firstName = names[0];
        this.lastName = names[1];
    }
});

// The point is we arive at this.
console.log(person.fullName); // John Smith

person.fullName = 'Jane Doe';

console.log(person.firstName); // Jane
console.log(person.lastName); // Doe

Remember tho, that a setter can only take one argument, because you can only have one value or expression after the assignment operator. ;)

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jonathanmessing

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Getters and setters

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oivindberg

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Tom Geraghty

Tom Geraghty