Tip: You can't extend the Proxy object

JavaScript, Object, Proxy · Apr 17, 2023

While the Proxy object seems like it can be extended by any other class in JavaScript, that's not the case. This is due to proxy objects having very atypical semantics and being considered exotic objects. Simply put, this means they do not have a prototype and are not extensible.

So how do you extend a proxy object? You don't. You can, however, create a class that returns a proxy by returning it from the constructor. After all, this is probably the sort of behavior you're after.

class MyProxy {
  constructor(value) {
    Object.keys(value).forEach(key => (this[key] = value[key]));
    return new Proxy(this, {
      set(object, key, value) {
        console.log(`Called with ${key} = ${value}`);
        object[key] = value;
        return true;
      }
    });
  }
}

const myProxy = new MyProxy({ a: 1 });
myProxy.b = 2; // LOGS: 'Called with b = 2'

Written by Angelos Chalaris

I'm Angelos Chalaris, a JavaScript software engineer, based in Athens, Greece. The best snippets from my coding adventures are published here to help others learn to code.

If you want to keep in touch, follow me on GitHub.

More like this