Object cloning

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When you want a complete copy of an object (i.e. the object properties and the values inside those properties, etc…), that is called deep cloning.

If an object can be serialized to JSON, then you can create a deep clone of it with a combination of JSON.parse and JSON.stringify:

var existing = { a: 1, b: { c: 2 } };
var copy = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(existing));
existing.b.c = 3; // copy.b.c will not change

Note that JSON.stringify will convert Date objects to ISO-format string representations, but JSON.parse will not convert the string back into a Date.

There is no built-in function in JavaScript for creating deep clones, and it is not possible in general to create deep clones for every object for many reasons. For example,

objects can have non-enumerable and hidden properties which cannot be detected.
object getters and setters cannot be copied.
objects can have a cyclic structure.
function properties can depend on state in a hidden scope.

Assuming that you have a “nice” object whose properties only contain primitive values, dates, arrays, or other “nice” objects, then the following function can be used for making deep clones. It is a recursive function that can detect objects with a cyclic structure and will throw an error in such cases.

function deepClone(obj) {
    function clone(obj, traversedObjects) {
        var copy;
        // primitive types
        if(obj === null || typeof obj !== "object") {
            return obj;
        }

        // detect cycles
        for(var i = 0; i < traversedObjects.length; i++) {
            if(traversedObjects[i] === obj) {
                throw new Error("Cannot clone circular object.");
            }
        }

        // dates
        if(obj instanceof Date) {
            copy = new Date();
            copy.setTime(obj.getTime());
            return copy;
        }
        // arrays
        if(obj instanceof Array) {
            copy = [];
            for(var i = 0; i < obj.length; i++) {
                copy.push(clone(obj[i], traversedObjects.concat(obj)));
            }
            return copy;
        }
        // simple objects
        if(obj instanceof Object) {
            copy = {};
            for(var key in obj) {
                if(obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
                    copy[key] = clone(obj[key], traversedObjects.concat(obj));
                }
            }
            return copy;
        }
        throw new Error("Not a cloneable object.");
    }

    return clone(obj, []);
}

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