Property getters and setters

JS offers two type of properties for objects: data properties and accessor properties. We would focus on accessor properties in this post as data properties refer to the more common ways of interacting with JavaScript objects.

Accessor properties or getters and setters

These are denoted by get or set. The getter is used when a value is read, for instance, returning the details of a user or a config after computing it. While setters are used to provide data to the object, in a similar way, this could be providing the first and last names of the user we described in the setter.

Demo:

let user = {
    firstName: 'Fredrick',
    lastName: 'Mgbeoma',

    get fullName() {
        return `${firstName} ${lastName}`,
    }

    set fullName(names) {
        [this.firstName, this.lastName] = names.split(' ');
    }
};

Reading data using getters:

user.fullName // Fredrick Mgbeoma

Providing data using setters:

user.fullName = "Jane Doe"