I am taking a course on Udemy "Javascript: Understanding the Weird Parts", and ran into a problem that won't let me move forward. I am building a small js framework. That has a simple structure:

(function (global, $){
   var Greetr = function(firstName, lastName, language){
       return new Greetr.init(firstName, lastName, language);
   }

   Greetr.prototype = {};

   Greetr.init = function(firstName, lastName, language){

      var self = this;

      self.firstName = firstName || "<first name>";

      self.lastName = lastName || "<last name>";

      self.language = language || "en";

   }

   Greetr.init.prototype = Greetr.prototype;

   global.Greetr = global.G$ = Greetr;

}(window,jQuery));

When I try to use my framework, I get an unexpected result:

var name = Greetr("John", "Doe");
console.log(name);

Outputs to the console: "[object Object]", of the strin type.

Am I missing something? Can you, please, help me figure out the solution?

Thank you in advance!

UPDATE #1 I am expecting an object, so that I can browse it in the Chrome's console, just like if you type 'window' in it.

UPDATE #2 Surprisingly, the error was in naming my object 'name':

var name = G$("John", "Doe");

Once I renamed it to something else, it worked just fine!

I am taking a course on Udemy "Javascript: Understanding the Weird Parts", and ran into a problem that won't let me move forward. I am building a small js framework. That has a simple structure:

(function (global, $){
   var Greetr = function(firstName, lastName, language){
       return new Greetr.init(firstName, lastName, language);
   }

   Greetr.prototype = {};

   Greetr.init = function(firstName, lastName, language){

      var self = this;

      self.firstName = firstName || "<first name>";

      self.lastName = lastName || "<last name>";

      self.language = language || "en";

   }

   Greetr.init.prototype = Greetr.prototype;

   global.Greetr = global.G$ = Greetr;

}(window,jQuery));

When I try to use my framework, I get an unexpected result:

var name = Greetr("John", "Doe");
console.log(name);

Outputs to the console: "[object Object]", of the strin type.

Am I missing something? Can you, please, help me figure out the solution?

Thank you in advance!

UPDATE #1 I am expecting an object, so that I can browse it in the Chrome's console, just like if you type 'window' in it.

UPDATE #2 Surprisingly, the error was in naming my object 'name':

var name = G$("John", "Doe");

Once I renamed it to something else, it worked just fine!

• javascript
• function
• object
• prototype

• Add a toString function. Greetr.init.prototype.toString = function() {return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName; };. Btw, Greetr.prototype is useless here and you only need to define Greetr.init.prototype. – Louay Alakkad Commented Jan 12, 2016 at 8:48

4 Answers 4

name is a Javascript object, so you cannot echo it as is, because it is not a scalar variable. An object may have a large structure and parent-child references. If you want to echo an object values, you can either implement a toString() method in your class which build a string you can use,

console.log (name.toString ()) ;

or use the json format.

console.log (JSON.stringify (name)) ;

you can log an object with this :

function clog (data){
  console.log(JSON.stringify(data, undefined, 2));
}
clog(name);

name is an Object that contains firstName, lastName, language. name.firstName should give you value of firstname "John".

Name is an object so to get a proper output you got to override toString:

// toString override added to prototype of your class
yourClass.prototype.toString = function()
{
   // return "[object yourclass]"; this is normally what it will return 
   return this.firstName + ' ' + this.lastName;
}