Why can't I reference a variable within a custom object?

Question

I'm just picking up Javascript, and I don't understand this problem.

I have created a custom object called DeleteReasonCodes with an instance variable called delReasonCodes , declared as an array. However, the inner methods can't seem to see this instance variable. Every time I try to run it, I get a delReasonCodes is not defined error.

Perhaps I'm just not understanding the Javascript scoping rules?

var DeleteReasonCodes = {

    delReasonCodes: [],

    get: function ()
    {
        return delReasonCodes;
    },

    add: function (code, desc)
    {
        delReasonCodes.push(new DeleteReasonCode(code, desc));
    }
};

Answer 1

No, javascript scoping belongs to functions (and nothing else).

The only variable you have created is DeleteReasonCodes , and you have assigned it an object with 3 properties . You can access them via a property accessor operator if you have a reference to the object. In your case, you could use this.delReasonCode or DeleteReasonCodes.delReasonCode - see this answer for the difference.

Answer 2

You're treating a JavaScript object as you would a class in another language. Local-scope in JavaScript only resides inside functions, not objects. In your case, you need to access the data with a fully-qualified name:

DeleteReasonCodes.delReasonCodes.push();

Answer 3

If you do this

delReasonCodes: [],

get: function() {
    return this.delReasonCodes;
},