Nodejs: how to clone an object

Question

If I clone an array, I use cloneArr = arr.slice()

I want to know how to clone an object in nodejs.

Answer 1

Old question, but there's a more elegant answer than what's been suggested so far; use the built-in utils._extend:

var extend = require("util")._extend;

var varToCopy = { test: 12345, nested: { val: 6789 } };

var copiedObject = extend({}, varToCopy);

console.log(copiedObject);

// outputs:
// { test: 12345, nested: { val: 6789 } }

Note the use of the first parameter with an empty object {} - this tells extend that the copied object(s) need to be copied to a new object. If you use an existing object as the first parameter, then the second (and all subsequent) parameters will be deep-merge-copied over the first parameter variable.

Using the example variables above, you can also do this:

var anotherMergeVar = { foo: "bar" };

extend(copiedObject, { anotherParam: 'value' }, anotherMergeVar);

console.log(copiedObject);

// outputs:
// { test: 12345, nested: { val: 6789 }, anotherParam: 'value', foo: 'bar' }

Very handy utility, especially where I'm used to extend in AngularJS and jQuery.

Hope this helps someone else; object reference overwrites are a misery, and this solves it every time!