Object and their methods in Javascript

I've been looking around to find a really nice way of defining classes and their methods in JavaScript. I am aware that there are numerous libraries out that have defined their own syntax for defining classes and their methods etc. However, my quest was to find a solution that did not require any extra libraries.

I'll explain it with an example;

function Student(name){
 
   this.name = name; 
 
   /*toString method of student class */
   Student.prototype.toString = function (){
        return "My name is " + this.name;
   }
}

The example outlines a very basic "Student" class that has a 'name' property and a 'toString' method. Since properties and functions are both objects in Javasctip we can define a class using the function keyword. It basically involves defining a constructor for the class. Since the "Student" class takes in 'name' as an argument, the "Student" class can be instantiated as;

studentObj = new Student("Bob");

The "Student" class also contains a method called 'toString'. The method is assigned to Student.prototype to ensure that there is only a single copy of the method for each instance. I found an About.com artitle, which suggested that this.prototype.toString = function() {} is the right syntax. However, it does not work with Firefox. Firefox complains about prototype not having any properties.

Once an instance has been created its methods or properties can be accessed by using the '.' (dot) operator.

studentObj.toString();

Objects in JavaScript makes it easier to reuse JavaScript code. As a lot of interface code is written in JavaScript, using an object oriented programming style would be advantages in the long-run.

On a side note; I discovered the proper way to check whether the a variable is null in JavaScript.

if(!someVariable) instead of if(someVariable!=null)

Javascript Syntax Validation

I am real fan of AJAX (not the cleaning product - I think my wife is a fan of that!). The really annoying thing about producing an AJAX front end for a web application is the lack of good free tools for Javascript. I recently stumbled upon the Web tool project (WTP) of the Eclipse foundation, who's goal is to produce a plugin for Eclipse (the greatest editor) to handle all AJAX languages like HTML, Javascript, CSS etc. Although the WTP plugin adds syntax highlighting functionality for Javascript, it does not perform any of the useful features that Eclipse has been synonymous for Java like Syntax checking, highlighting variable occurrences etc.

I searched on the web for a syntax checker for Javascript. I know that Firefox has a plugin which outlines syntax errors while running the script. However, I wanted to eradicate syntax errors before running a script, because there are other errors to worry about when running a script.

I came across Javascript Lint, which has a really neat utility for checking for Javascript syntax errors. It also provide a downloadable little app that can check the syntax of scripts as a command line utility or even as a right click option in the windows file explorer.

Javascript Lint uses Firefoxe's Javascript engine to check for syntax errors. I came across this article which seems to say that the Firefox JS engine was very strict. However, my experiences with it have been ok so far.