Happy 2015, everyone!

I’m neck deep in a pile of JavaScript, and I am trying to create aliases. As it turns out, this is relatively easy to accomplish.

Let’s look at a sample class.

var MyClass = (function() {
    function MyClass(initialValue) {
        this.value = +initialValue || 0;
    }
})();

Creating an instance and getting/setting value is quite simple. We can create a new instance of MyClass and simply access the value.

var instance = new MyClass();
instance.value = 3;
console.log("value = " + instance.value); // value = 3

My problem was that I needed to create an alias. It turns out, this is pretty easy to do an object with Object.defineProperty(). I simply give it an object, the name of the getter/setter, and the appropriate functions.

Object.defineProperty(instance, "alias", {
    get: function() {
        return this.value;
    },
    set: function(x) {
        this.value = x;
    }
});

I can now create change value and read alias.

instance.value = 4;
console.log("value = " + instance.alias); // value = 4

What if we wanted all instances of MyClass to share this alias? That takes just one small trick: instead of using instance, simply use MyClass.prototype. Applying the new property to the prototype means that all instances of that class will be created with the new getter and setter.

var MyClass = (function() {
    function MyClass(initialValue) {
        this.value = +initialValue || 0;
    }

    Object.defineProperty(MyClass.prototype, "alias", {
        get: getAlias,
        set: setAlias
    });

    return MyClass;

    function getAlias() {
        return this.value;
    }

    function setAlias(x) {
        this.value = x;
    }
})();

Now, every new instance of MyClass will have both the value and alias properties.

var instance = new MyClass(5);
console.log(instance.value); // 5
instance.alias += 2;
console.log(instance.value); // 7
instance.value += 3;
console.log(instance.alias); // 10