CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javascript
jcoder
jcoder

Reputation: 30045

Alternative to pass by reference in javascript

I'm a c++ programmer learning javascript.

I have a javascript function loadTexture to load an image from a URL and create an opengl texture from it. It works asynchronously and returns a Promise object so that I can tell when it's finished. All good :)

But I'd like to be able to tell it where to store the resulting opengl texture id, something like this -

var catImageFuture = loadTexture("cat.png", this.catTextureId);
/* Wait for the future, and several other ones to complete before doing the next thing */

And have it store the opengl id it generates in the variable I passed in as the second parameters. In C++ this would be simple, I could pass a reference or a pointer to the variable to the function. But this isn't possible in Javascript as it has no pass by reference or pointers.

What is the right way to achieve a similar aim in Javascript.

Upvotes: 3

Views: 284

Answers (3)

user823738
user823738

Reputation: 17521

There are several ways:

You can use custom object and manage that, like:

var cat = new Cat();
cat.texture = new Texture();
...

Or you can use callbacks:

var TextureId;

function loadTexture(path, callback)
{
    var img = new Image(path);
    var id = (GetSomeHowId);\
    img.onload = (function(i){ return (function(){callback(i);}); })(id);
}

loadTexture("cat.png", (function(id){ TextureId = id; }));

Hope you got the point.

Upvotes: 1

Barmar
Barmar

Reputation: 782105

In Javascript you would use a function. The function would receive the data as a parameter and store it wherever is appropriate. You might use a closure to capture a reference to a local variable.

Another option is to always wrap the data in an object. Pass the object to your function, and ithe function can assign a property of the object. Objects and arrays are passed like pointers in Javascript, so when the function modifies it, it will be visible to the caller.

Upvotes: 1

Blender
Blender

Reputation: 298432

JavaScript has no mechanism (yet) to elegantly inline asynchronous code. Right now, everything is done with callbacks. If you implement a done method on your Future object that passes its result as an argument to a callback, you'd be able to write:

var that = this; // You may need this, depending on how you implement Future.done

loadTexture("cat.png").done(function(result) {
    that.catTextureId = result;
});

JavaScript runtimes will support generators in a few years, so you'll soon be writing:

this.catTextureId = yield loadTexture("cat.png");

Upvotes: 3

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