Understanding the Object.create function of JS

Question

I created a normal JS object

var person1 = {
name:"ABCD"
}

And then created another Object person2 as

var person2 = Object.create(person1)

Now in browser console when I type

person1 - it gives me the object definition. But when I type person2 - an empty object is printed (i.e {}) though person2.name returns ABCD.

Any thoughts on what is happening here.

name property comes from the prototype – Szymon D Jan 20 '19 at 08:49 — Szymon D, Jan 20 '19 at 08:49

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jan 20 '19 at 08:51

person2 is empty, since you've never assigned to any of its properties; in the console, you have to expand the __proto__ property to get to the prototype of the object, to see what it inherits from.

When typing code in a script (not in the console), although you can use __proto__ to access the prototype:

var person1 = {
  name:"ABCD"
};
var person2 = Object.create(person1);

console.log(person2.__proto__ === person1);

it's deprecated, it's preferable to use Object.getPrototypeOf:

var person1 = {
  name:"ABCD"
};
var person2 = Object.create(person1);

console.log(Object.getPrototypeOf(person2) === person1);

Understanding the Object.create function of JS

1 Answers1