After taking inspiration from eligrey, I've decided to implement an Object.observe polyfill that matches spec almost 100% (see below for differences). If you're not familiar with the API, HTML5 Rocks has a good writeup on it.
A full test-suite is included with this polyfill. You'll need mocha
, and jshint
installed globally for the best results. To run:
npm install && npm test
There is also a gulp file included to build yourself. This requires mocha
, jshint
, and gulp
to be installed globally.
gulp
runs the default task, which is building, linting, and running the test suite.gulp test
runs the mocha test suite.gulp build
builds the minified js inbuild/observe.min.<build>.js
gulp clean
cleans the/build
directory.gulp hint
runs jshint on the/lib
folder.
Though this polyfill has the majority of functionality that I anticipate people to use, there are a few differences.
- Doesn't work with Arrays. This might be addressed in the future.
- Only supports the
add
,delete
, andupdate
events on an object. The Spec implements other low-level events, such aspreventExtensions
andfrozen
. These will be addressed at a later date.
- Deleted properties don't have the
oldValue
parameter in the change payload.
The most obvious use is for data-binding. When a user, or another 3rd party, makes changes to an object there can now be handlers in place for how to respond. This brings an incredible amount of automation and power to applications.
This will work in any browser that has implemented ES5. To summarize: IE9+, Chrome 6+, FireFox 4+, Safari 5+, and Node.
The MIT License (MIT)
Copyright (c) 2014 Joel Griffith
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.