Consider the following code, using ECMAScript5's Object.defineProperty
feature:
var sayHi = function(){ alert('hi'); };
var defineProperty = (typeof Object.defineProperty == 'function');
if (defineProperty) Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype,'sayHi',{value:sayHi});
else Array.prototype.sayHi = sayHi;
var a = [];
a.sayHi();
This works for Chrome and Firefox 4 (where defineProperty
exists), and it works for Firefox 3.6 (where defineProperty
does not exist). IE8, however, only partially supports defineProperty
. As a result, it attempts to run the Object.defineProperty
method, but then fails (with no error shown in the browser) and ceases to run all other JavaScript code on the page.
Is there a better way to detect and avoid IE8's broken implementation than:
if (defineProperty){
try{ Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype,'sayHi',{value:sayHi}); }catch(e){};
}
if (!Array.prototype.sayHi) Array.prototype.sayHi = sayHi;
For the curious, I'm using this in my ArraySetMath library to define non-enumerable array methods in those browsers that support this, with a fallback to enumerable methods for older browsers.
I don't think there's a better way than a direct feature test with try/catch. This is actually exactly what IE team itself recommends in this recent post on transitioning to ES5 API.
You can shorten the test to just something like Object.defineProperty({}, 'x', {})
(instead of using Array.prototype
) but that's a minor quibble; your example tests exact functionality (and so has less chance of false positives).
I'm using Browserify with the package pluralize from npm which uses Object.defineProperty and I dropped this in.
https://github.com/inexorabletash/polyfill/blob/master/es5.js
I stumbled on this before. IMHO using a try…catch statement is too drastic.
Something more efficient would be to use conditional compilation:
/*@cc_on@if(@_jscript_version>5.8)if(document.documentMode>8)@*/
Object.defineProperty && Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype,'sayHi',{value:sayHi});
/*@end@*/
I had the same kind issue (i.e. the Object.defineProperty in IE 8 being DOM only and not a full implementation as the other browsers), but it was for a polyfill..
Anyhoo, I ended using a 'feature' check to see if I was using IE, its not perfect, but it works on all the tests I could do:
if (Object.defineProperty && !document.all && document.addEventListener) {
Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype,'sayHi',{value:sayHi});
} else {
Array.prototype.sayHi = sayHi;
}
as IE <= 8 has no document.addEventListener
, and document.all
is a proprietary Microsoft extension to the W3C standard. These two checks are equivalent to checking if IE is version 8 or below.
Array.prototype.sayHi = function(){ alert('hi'); };
try {
Object.defineProperty(Array.prototype, 'sayHi', {
value: Array.prototype.sayHi
});
}
catch(e){};