Improve (?) Your Javascript Coding Style

Nov 7, 2007

I've gotten pretty good at javascript over the years, and I've gotten to the point where I try to do things using the bare minimum number of bytes, while still having the code readable and looking nice. In this short article, I'll outline a few of my own little coding style tips to help keep your code looking tight.

Keep in mind that, for the most part, these aren't optimisations. They won't make your code run significantly faster, but will merely help you accomplish the same thing in fewer bytes. And to me, fewer bytes often means more elegant algorithms.

This is a simple thing. You probably already know that a = a + b can be shortened with the Add-by-value operator to a += b; But you might not realize that almost all discrete math operators can work this way:

a = a + b;   becomes   a += b;   // addition
a = a - b;   becomes   a -= b;   // subtraction
a = a * b;   becomes   a *= b;   // multiplication
a = a / b;   becomes   a /= b;   // division
a = a % b;   becomes   a %= b;   // modulus
a = a << b;  becomes   a <<= b;  // bitwise shift left
a = a >> b;  becomes   a >>= b;  // bitwise shift right
a = a >>> b; becomes   a >>>= b; // zero-fill bitwise shift right
a = a & b;   becomes   a &= b;   // bitwise AND
a = a | b;   becomes   a |= b;   // bitwise OR
a = a ^ b;   becomes   a ^= b;   // bitwise XOR

A cool thing about javascript, and many other computer languages, is the fact that assignments not only do the task of assignment, but they also return a value. This means that the following code will alert "Hello World!" as well as assigning it to the foo variable for later use.

alert(foo = "Hello World!");

Say we want to prompt the user for some info, check to see if they actually typed something, and if so store the contents into the foo variable. We can do this all in one step!

if (foo = prompt("Type a value for foo:")) {
  alert("You typed: " + foo);
} else alert("You didn't type anything!");

This not only works with the = operator, but with any operator which assigns a value. Consider the following code:

while (i < 30) {
  i++;
  // ... Do something
}

The increment operator assigns a value of i + 1 to i, after it has returned the i value. However, why have it on it's own line? The while loop expression is evaluated every loop, let's put the assignment there instead:

while (i++ < 30) {
  // ... Do something
}

Comma separation of assignments also plays a part in reducing the amount of code used. You can use comma separation to string together multiple assignments in various contexts:

var foo = 1;
var bar = 2;
var baz = 3;

// is equivalent to:

var foo = 1, bar = 2, baz = 3;

This also works in the for loop context:

var y = 0;
for (var x = 0; x < 10; x++) {
  y++;
  // ... Do something
}

// is equivalent to:

for (var x = 0, y = 0; x < 10; x++, y++) {
  // ... Do something
}

That neatens things up nicely, if I do say so myself. Lastly, we can assign the same value to multiple values in one go:

var x = 1, y = 2, z = 3;

x = 4;
y = 4;
z = 4;

// is equivalent to:

var x = 1, y = 2, z = 3;

x = y = z = 4;

This works because the javascript engine first assigns the number 4 to variable z, then that assignment returns the value 4 which gets assigned to y, then that assignment returns 4 which gets assigned to x!

The only caveat with these methods are that they don't all work if you are also using var to define the variable at the same time. For instance, the following example will cause a syntax error:

if (var foo = prompt("Type a value for foo:")) {
  alert("You typed: " + foo);
} else alert("You didn't type anything!");

You need to forego using var (which I don't recommend), or define foo as an in-scope variable beforehand.

Say you have a boolean variable acting as a switch. A user action can turn it on (== true) and the same user action can turn it off (== false). Just like a light-switch! When I first started using javascript, I was implementing these switches like so:

var foo = false;

if ([user action]) {
  if (foo) {
    foo = false;
  } else foo = true;
}

That's quite a lot of code for something which should be simple. Then I learned the ( ) ? : syntax which allows you to use the if structure directly within assignment statements, so I started using this:

var foo = false;

if ([user action]) {
  foo = (foo) ? false : true;
}

Awesome! All on one line! I used this method for quite some time until I stumbled across an even more compact method within someone else's code. I was using the following method up until very recently:

var foo = false;

if ([user action]) {
  foo = !foo;
}

Here we assign the NOT value of foo to the foo variable. The NOT value is the always the opposite boolean value of the variable. So if foo is true, NOT makes it false, and if foo is false, NOT makes it true! We sure have come a long way from three lines and 45 bytes down to one line and 11 bytes! But there's an even smaller way.

Consider the scenario that we're dealing with really long variable names, or deeply nested objects. Suppose we have a boolean variable named myObject.property1.subproperty5.foo. Using the method above, we get:

var foo = false;

if ([user action]) {
  myObject.property1.subproperty5.foo = !myObject.property1.subproperty5.foo;
}

Man, we have to repeat the whole variable name; that's a lot of duplicated bytes. Isn't there a way we could do it so we only have to write it once? You could try prototyping a function onto the javascript Boolean object, but it has a funny way of dealing with its own evaluation which means you can't assign it from prototyped functions. So how?

The key lies in how javascript treats other types of data. In javascript, the values false, 0, null, undefined, NaN and "" (the empty string) all evaluate to false, while anything else evaluates to true. Is there some kind of operator we can apply so that true becomes something that evaluates to false, and false becomes something that evaluates to true? There is! It's the XOR operator: ^. XOR chiefly operates on binary data, taking two bits (0 or 1), comparing them; if they are different return 1 and if they are the same return 0. XOR works on booleans by first casting the true or false value into a 1 or 0 binary digit respectively, then working its magic. Example output follows:

var foo = true, bar = false;

var baz = foo ^ foo;   // false
var baz = foo ^ bar;   // true
var baz = bar ^ foo;   // true
var baz = bar ^ bar;   // false

If we examine the first and third lines, we see an interesting thing. Any boolean XORed with a value of true becomes the opposite of what it was! true ^ true = false and false ^ true = true. Then using the XOR-by-value method mentioned earlier, we can finally boil this code down to:

var foo = false;

if ([user action]) {
  myObject.property1.subproperty5.foo ^= 1;
}

The number 1 is equivalent to true and only takes one byte rather than four. And there you have it, the Boolean Flip using only the variable name and 5 extra bytes, two of which are whitespace! After this operation, the variable won't be a boolean anymore, but rather either a 1 or a 0. These values can be used in all situations where booleans are used unless you require strict equality (===) which is usually never.

What byte-saving javascript tricks do you know?

⇐ Apache mod_rewrite & mod_alias tricks you should know

The Great Planet Debate ⇒

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