Init object in javascript using || operator [duplicate]

Answer 1

You can use this construct to get the object that is not null, undefined, etc. This is used in cases where you use myObj later on in the code which requires it to be an object. If, for some reason, myObj is undefined prior to this line, re-assigning it leaves it undefined or null, in which case it would be assigned {}.

You can think of this as:

// If the object is already defined
if (myObj)
    var myObj = myObj;
// It was undefined or null, so assign an empty object to it.
else
    var myObj = {};