inheritance problem

kaos_frack · February 4th, 2007, 11:06 AM

I'm trying to create an object (car1) inside another object (Garage).
car1 object should inherit from Car object and define it's own members. But the code below is not working. Can someone tell me the reason and maybe a solution.

Code:

<script type="text/javascript">
function Car(sColor) {
   this.color = sColor;
}

Car.prototype.sayColor = function() {
   alert(this.color);
};

var Garage = {
   car1: {
      prototype: new Car("red"),
      owner: "john"
   }
};

alert(Garage.car1.owner); // outputs "john"
alert(Garage.car1.color); // outputs "undefined"
alert(Garage.car1.prototype.color); // outputs "red"
Garage.car1.prototype.sayColor(); // outputs "red"
Garage.car1.sayColor(); // fails
</script>

Why wouldn't this kind of inheritance work?
Isn't it (the statement in red) the same as:

Code:

car1.prototype = new Car("red");

EDIT: I even tried this:

Code:

var Garage = {
   car1: function() {},
   car1.prototype: new Car("red"),
   car1.owner: "john"
};

But no use.

Thanks

pepejeria · March 25th, 2007, 09:28 AM

Code:

var Garage = {
   car1: {
      prototype: new Car("red"),
      owner: "john"
   }
};

car1 is in this case a property of the Garage object. The propertys value is a literal object value. Only objects created calling a constructor has an associated prototype property.

So what you do in your code is to simply add a property called prototype and assign a new Car object to it. There is no inheritance in your code. Thats why Garage.car1.color is undefined