Sneaky Abstractions

I’ve made a few changes to the JavascriptRoutes plugin to make it Even Better™. One of those changes is to check hasOwnProperty on parameters and options, and it has made it clear to me how important it is to not mess around with Object.prototype (or, make sure an object’s properties don’t come from somewhere in the prototype chain).

Before:

Object.prototype.iThinkEveryObjectShouldHaveThis = 'for sure';
Routes.generate({controller:'lolcats', action:'show', id:1}, {onlyPath:true})
// => "/lolcats/1?iThinkEveryObjectShouldHaveThis=for%20sure"

Now:

Object.prototype.iThinkEveryObjectShouldHaveThis = 'for sure';
Routes.generate({controller:'lolcats', action:'show', id:1}, {onlyPath:true})
// => "/lolcats/1"

This also means the plugin won’t work in browsers that don’t have the hasOwnProperty method. Those that I know of that don’t have this are Safari 1.3 and IE 5.0. It also uses try-catch, which was only introduced in JavaScript 1.5. If enough people complain, I might try to change this.