This binding in JavaScript - 3. Explicit binding

This post (This binding in JavaScript - 3. Explicit binding) was originally published on Sargalias.

In this series we talk about this binding in JavaScript.

This is a very important topic. It's also something that even experienced developers frequently get wrong and / or have to think about.

Basically in JavaScript there are 4 modes for this binding. Make that 5 if we include arrow functions.

In order of lowest priority to highest priority, here they are:

1. Default binding
2. Implicit binding
3. Explicit binding
4. New binding
5. Arrow functions
6. Gotchas and final notes

In this post we'll talk about explicit binding.

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How explicit binding works

Explicit binding has even higher precedence than implicit binding.

We use it by using one of the three functions call, apply or bind, present in function objects.

call, apply and bind explicitly provide the value of this.

For example, when calling foo.call(obj), the value of this in foo becomes obj. The first argument passed in .call is the value of this you want the function to have.

call, apply and bind do the same thing in essence. They all bind the value of this, which they accept as their first argument.

But they have some slight differences.

.call

.call accepts additional arguments that are comma separated. They will be passed to the function call.

For example: foo.call(obj, argument1, argument2) does two things.

1. It makes this inside the function be obj.
2. It passes arguments to the function as though it was called with foo(argument1, argument2).

.apply

.apply is very similar, the only difference being that it accepts arguments in an array.

For example: foo.apply(obj, [argument1, argument2]) is how you would call the function using apply. It does two things.

1. It makes this inside the function be obj.
2. It passes arguments to the function as though it was called with foo(argument1, argument2).

.bind

.bind is slightly different. It returns your target function with the correct this. It doesn't call it immediately.

.bind is also referred to as "hard binding".

For example:

const obj = {};
function foo() {
  console.log(this);
}

const functionWithBoundThis = foo.bind(obj); // nothing is logged to the console
functionWithBoundThis(); // now we log obj to the console

It can also accept additional arguments. However that's a side point so I'll have to refer you to the MDN documentation for Function.prototype.bind().

Precedence

Out of these, .bind has the highest precedence.

For example if you use both .bind first and .call second, .bind is going to win.

For example:

const objForBind = { name: 'objForBind' };
const objForCall = { name: 'objForCall' };

function foo() {
  console.log(this);
}

const boundFunction = foo.bind(objForBind);
boundFunction.call(objForCall); // logs objForBind to the console, not objForCall

As mentioned, these methods also have higher precedence than implicit binding.

const obj = {
  foo() {
    console.log(this);
  },
};

obj.foo.call(objForCall); // logs objForCall to the console, not obj

That's the gist for .call, .apply and .bind.