extend function in javascript

Question

Ok, long story short, i have 2 classes(functions) and need extend one from second.. In the end of hard day, i wrote simply solution, but then i come home, i thought this is wrong.. But.. Actually it's working, only i don't understand why.. So for example i have 2 functions:

function aa() {
  var r = "aaaa";
  this.method = function(){
    console.log(r);
  }
}

function bb() {
  var e = "bbbb";
  this.method2 = function(){
    console.log(e);
  }
}

var a = new aa();
var b = new bb();

After i use this function to merge them:

var merge = function(one, two) {
  for(var method in two) {
    one[method] = two[method];
  }
  return one;
}
var c = merge(a, b);

And this is work fine.. so question is why? I guess in 'merge' function, i just add to first object method of second, but this method used private variable what not defined in first object, why he sees it?

Answer 1

The r and e values are included in the scope of the method and method2 functions. Even after these functions are moved around, they still maintain a reference to variables in the scope in which they were defined. This is called a closure. More: How do JavaScript closures work?

Answer 2

Notice that you didn't copy the method2 function from one prototype to another - you added a reference to method2 in aa .

As long as bb exists, method2 will be able to access bb 's variable e . Specially since e was declared in a scope that is visible to method2 .

Answer 3

That is basically how closures work. Your code can be simplified to this:

var bar;
(function foo () {
    var x = 10;
    bar = function () {
        alert(x);
    }
})();

// Now that we're outside of foo:
bar(); // bar can still see "x".

// Even if you do this:
var x = 0;
bar(); // bar still sees x=10

Answer 4

This is jQuery's deep copy method they use for their .extend() api

function() {
var src, copyIsArray, copy, name, options, clone,
    target = arguments[0] || {},
    i = 1,
    length = arguments.length,
    deep = false;

// Handle a deep copy situation
if ( typeof target === "boolean" ) {
    deep = target;
    target = arguments[1] || {};
    // skip the boolean and the target
    i = 2;
}

// Handle case when target is a string or something (possible in deep copy)
if ( typeof target !== "object" && !jQuery.isFunction(target) ) {
    target = {};
}

// extend jQuery itself if only one argument is passed
if ( length === i ) {
    target = this;
    --i;
}

for ( ; i < length; i++ ) {
    // Only deal with non-null/undefined values
    if ( (options = arguments[ i ]) != null ) {
        // Extend the base object
        for ( name in options ) {
            src = target[ name ];
            copy = options[ name ];

            // Prevent never-ending loop
            if ( target === copy ) {
                continue;
            }

            // Recurse if we're merging plain objects or arrays
            if ( deep && copy && ( jQuery.isPlainObject(copy) || (copyIsArray = jQuery.isArray(copy)) ) ) {
                if ( copyIsArray ) {
                    copyIsArray = false;
                    clone = src && jQuery.isArray(src) ? src : [];

                } else {
                    clone = src && jQuery.isPlainObject(src) ? src : {};
                }

                // Never move original objects, clone them
                target[ name ] = jQuery.extend( deep, clone, copy );

            // Don't bring in undefined values
            } else if ( copy !== undefined ) {
                target[ name ] = copy;
            }
        }
    }
}

// Return the modified object
return target;
};