This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
Today, we’re going to learn how to assign default parameter values with vanilla JS.
Let’s imagine you have a function that adds two numbers together.
function add (num1, num2) {
return num1 + num2;
}
// Add 4 and 2
// returns 6
add(4, 2);
If you don’t pass in a value for an argument, your script will use undefined. This can result in some unexpected results.
// returns "NaN"
add(3);
To address this, you historically needed to either make sure all required parameters were assigned an argument, or check for values in your function and reassign values to them.
// Approach 1: Make sure values are assigned
function add (num1, num2) {
// If num1 or num2 aren't defined, throw an error
if (!num1 || !num2) {
throw 'Please provide two numbers to add together';
}
// Add the numbers
return num1 + num2;
}
// Approach 2: Reassign values
function add (num1, num2) {
// Reassign values if none are provides
num1 = !num1 ? 0 : num1;
num2 = !num2 ? 0 : num2;
// Add the numbers
return num1 + num2;
}
But ES6 introduced a powerful new way to handle this: default parameters.
You can set a default value for each parameter by adding = default value when defining it. In this example, both num1 and num2 will get a value of 0 is no argument is supplied.
function add (num1 = 0, num2 = 0) {
// Add the numbers
// If num1 or num2 is not provided, 0 will be used
return num1 + num2;
}
// returns 4
add(4);
This content originally appeared on Go Make Things and was authored by Go Make Things
