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

I use this:

Object.prototype.initProperty = function(name, defaultValue) {
  if (!(name in this)) this[name] = defaultValue;
};

You can later do f.e.:

var x = {a: 1};
x.initProperty("a", 2); // will not change property a
x.initProperty("b", 3); // will define property b
console.log(x); // => {a: 1, b: 3}