Question:
Can I override "default" functions in Javascript?
Background:
After figuring out that I had collisions between objects stored in localStorage
, I decided that I should apply a prefix to all keys to avoid collisions. Obviously, I could create a wrapper function, but it would be so much neater to override the default localStorage.getItem
& localStorage.setItem
directly to take my prefix into account.
My example kills Firefox completely as it recursively calls itself, so it clearly isn't close to a solution. Perhaps it clarifies what I want to accomplish though.
Code:
Storage.prototype.setItem = function(key, value) {
this.setItem("prefix"+key, value);
};
Storage.prototype.getItem = function(key, value) {
return this.getItem("prefix"+key);
};
You need to store the old function.
Storage.prototype._setItem = Storage.prototype.setItem;
Storage.prototype.setItem = function(key, value) {
this._setItem("prefix" + key, value);
};
Storage.prototype._getItem = Storage.prototype.getItem;
Storage.prototype.getItem = function(key) {
return this._getItem("prefix" + key);
};
If you don't, you get an infinite loop consuming stack space at every iteration, resulting in a stack overflow, crashing your browser :)
Alternatively, instead of creating a new variables to hold the old Storage functions you could always bind your functions like so.
Storage.prototype.setItem = (function(key, value) {
this.call(localStorage,"prefix" + key, value);
}).bind(Storage.prototype.setItem);
Storage.prototype.getItem = (function(key) {
return this.call(localStorage,"prefix" + key);
}).bind(Storage.prototype.getItem);
And you get the benefits of representing your new functions as native code when inspected in the console as well as a less cluttered code.
That is normal, you make a infinite recursion : in Storage.prototype.setItem, you call this.setItem that refers to Storage.prototype.setItem.
The same for Storage.prototype.getItem.