Schlueterica

Good news, everyone!

This function can be used to create an instance of an arbitrary class, and pass the list of arguments to the class’s constructor.

var spawn = function(cls, args) {
  if(!args instanceof Array) args = [args];
  var f=function(){};
  f.prototype=cls.prototype;
  f.prototype.constructor = cls;
  var obj = new f();
  cls.apply(obj,args);
  return obj;
};

Usage:

var myClass = function(a,b,c){ this.a=a; this.b=b; this.c=c; }
var myInstance = spawn(myClass,[1,2,3]); // same as myInstance = new myClass(1,2,3);

So, you may ask, why not just use the new keyword? Because new can’t be used to pass an unknown length of arguments to the constructor, that’s why! Another way to say that is:

spawn : new :: apply() : call()

So, if your class and your argument list are being set at run-time, this function allows you to create objects without relying on knowing the number of arguments to pass to the constructor, like so:

var Collection = function(cls) {
    this.class = cls;
    this.stack = [];
};
Collection.prototype={
  make:function() {
    var thing = spawn(this.class,arguments);
    this.stack.push(thing);
    return thing;
  }
};
var myClassCollection = new Collection(myClass);
myClassCollection.make(123,123,123);
alert(myClassCollection.stack[0].a); // “123″


Enjoy.