Object cloning

suggest change

When you want a complete copy of an object (i.e. the object properties and the values inside those properties, etc…), that is called deep cloning.

If an object can be serialized to JSON, then you can create a deep clone of it with a combination of JSON.parse and JSON.stringify:

var existing = { a: 1, b: { c: 2 } };
var copy = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(existing));
existing.b.c = 3; // copy.b.c will not change

Note that JSON.stringify will convert Date objects to ISO-format string representations, but JSON.parse will not convert the string back into a Date.

There is no built-in function in JavaScript for creating deep clones, and it is not possible in general to create deep clones for every object for many reasons. For example,

Assuming that you have a “nice” object whose properties only contain primitive values, dates, arrays, or other “nice” objects, then the following function can be used for making deep clones. It is a recursive function that can detect objects with a cyclic structure and will throw an error in such cases.

function deepClone(obj) {
    function clone(obj, traversedObjects) {
        var copy;
        // primitive types
        if(obj === null || typeof obj !== "object") {
            return obj;
        }

        // detect cycles
        for(var i = 0; i < traversedObjects.length; i++) {
            if(traversedObjects[i] === obj) {
                throw new Error("Cannot clone circular object.");
            }
        }

        // dates
        if(obj instanceof Date) {
            copy = new Date();
            copy.setTime(obj.getTime());
            return copy;
        }
        // arrays
        if(obj instanceof Array) {
            copy = [];
            for(var i = 0; i < obj.length; i++) {
                copy.push(clone(obj[i], traversedObjects.concat(obj)));
            }
            return copy;
        }
        // simple objects
        if(obj instanceof Object) {
            copy = {};
            for(var key in obj) {
                if(obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
                    copy[key] = clone(obj[key], traversedObjects.concat(obj));
                }
            }
            return copy;
        }
        throw new Error("Not a cloneable object.");
    }

    return clone(obj, []);
}

Feedback about page:

Feedback:
Optional: your email if you want me to get back to you:


Objects:
* Syntax
* Object cloning

Table Of Contents
11 Arrays
12 Objects
14 Classes
16 Map
17 Set
24 Loops
27 Date
29 Scope
30 AJAX
35 Cookies
41 JSON
44 Fetch
45 Modules
46 Screen
64 Console
68 Symbols
73 Modals
76 Events
86 Proxy
89 WeakMap
90 WeakSet
102 Tilde