Automatically create object if undefined

Question

Is there an easy way to automatically add properties to objects if they don\'t allready exist?

Consider the following example:

var test = {}
test.hel         


        

Answer 1

Well you could extend the prototype of Object with a function that return a property, but adds it first, if it doesn't exist:

Object.prototype.getOrCreate = function (prop) {
    if (this[prop] === undefined) {
        this[prop] = {};
    }
    return this[prop];
};

var obj = {};

obj.getOrCreate("foo").getOrCreate("bar").val = 1;