Object no longer instanceof object

pepejeria · April 9th, 2006, 03:52 AM

I ran into this problem I can't figure out. I have an object (oCar) that I set as a property of another object (oPerson). When I pass oPerson as an argument, the property containing oCar, will no longer be an instanceof Object:

Code:

var oCar = new Object();
oCar.model = "Volvo";
oCar.color = "red";

var oPerson = new Object();
oPerson.car = oCar;

alert(oPerson.car instanceof Object); // true

test(oPerson.car);

function test(oData)
{
    alert(oData.car instanceof Object); // false
}

AGS · April 9th, 2006, 04:50 AM

I believe there is just a misprint in your code.
You are passing oPerson.car as an argument to test() function and further is trying to get car property from the instance of the car object itself. The value of car.car is "undefined" and instanceof Object returns "false".

Best regards,
Alexei

pepejeria · April 9th, 2006, 05:08 AM

It's not undefined, try this:

Code:

function test(oData)
{
    alert(oData.car instanceof Object); // false
    alert(oData.model); // Volvo
    alert(oData.color); // red
}

JosÃ© Jeria

AGS · April 9th, 2006, 05:21 AM

Frankly speaking I don't understand the point.
The oPerson object has a car property. You are passing THIS property as an argument to the test() function.

Quote:

quote:test(oPerson.car);

And then you are trying to get car property from the oCar instance but it doesn't have one. But it does have of course model and color properties.
Try this

Code:

function test(oData)
{
    alert(typeof oData.car); 
    alert(oData.model); // Volvo
    alert(oData.color); // red
}

Alexei

nzakas · April 9th, 2006, 12:19 PM

Jose,

The point Alexei is making is that you are passing in the car object to the function but you are treating it as if you are passing in the person object. So, when you try oData.car instanceof Object, it returns false since there is no oPerson.car.car, meaning that this property is undefined and therefore not an instance of an Object.

Nicholas C. Zakas
Author, Professional JavaScript for Web Developers (ISBN 0764579088)
http://www.nczonline.net/

pepejeria · May 12th, 2006, 06:22 AM

Hello guys,

sorry for have wasted your time. My testcase that I provided was not really showing the issue. It very obvious why the code I provided above is wrong. Doh.

Anyway, I now have an example that shows the problem I was having. Basically an object is no longer instanceof Object when it is passed to another window.

Main window html:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Test</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<script type="text/javascript">
window.onload = function()
{
    window.open("popup.html", "", "width=200, height=200");
}

function checkIfObject(oTest)
{
    var sMsg = "Object passed to main window. Instance of Object == ";
    var bIsObject = oTest instanceof Object;
    alert(sMsg + bIsObject); // this will alert false
}
</script>
</head>

<body>


</body>
</html>

Popup window html:

Code:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"
    "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">
<html>
<head>
<title>Popup</title>
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<script type="text/javascript">
function checkIfObject(oTest)
{
    var sMsg = "Car object created. Instance of Object == ";
    var bIsObject = oTest instanceof Object;
    alert(sMsg + bIsObject); // this will alert true
}

var oCar = new Object();
oCar.color = "red";
oCar.amountOfDoors = 4;

checkIfObject(oCar);
opener.checkIfObject(oCar);
</script>
</head>

<body>


</body>
</html>

Due to this, we had to use the JSON.stringify(oMyObj) method (see json.org) to pass object between windows... Would be interesting to know why this doesn't really work.

What is interesting is that I can access the properties of the object. Odd.

Regards,

/JosÃ© Jeria

AGS · May 12th, 2006, 07:47 AM

pepejeria · May 12th, 2006, 08:22 AM

Thanks Alexei, that explains the issue I am having pretty well.

pepejeria · May 12th, 2006, 08:32 AM

So the 2 solutions for this would be:

a) Do what I am doing now, to serialize the object to a string and then pass it
b) Have a global variable in the main window that gets set by the child window

Any thoughts on what would be the best solution for this? Option b pollutes the window object, but solution a sounds to be a bit of overkill, but no need for global variables (we are developing in a very strict oo enviroment)

Regards,

/JosÃ© Jeria