Alter and Assign Object Without Side Effects

Question

I currently have the following code:

var myArray = [];
var myElement = {
  id: 0,
  value: 0
}

myElement.id = 0;
myElement.value = 1;
myArray[0] = myElement         


        

Answer 1

That's because object values are passed by reference. You can clone the object like this:

var myArray = [];
var myElement = {
  id: 0,
  value: 0
}

myElement.id =0;
myElement.value=1;
myArray[0] = myElement;

var obj = {};
obj = clone(myElement);
obj.id = 2;
obj.value = 3; 

myArray[1] = obj;

function clone(obj){
  if(obj == null || typeof(obj) != 'object')
    return obj;

  var temp = new obj.constructor(); 
  for(var key in obj)
    temp[key] = clone(obj[key]);

  return temp;
}    

console.log(myArray[0]);
console.log(myArray[1]);

Result:

 - id: 0
 - value: 1
 - id: 2
 - value: 3