UNB/ CS/ David Bremner/ teaching/ cs2613/ books/ mdn/ Reference/ Global Objects/ WeakSet

A WeakSet is a collection of garbage-collectable values, including objects and non-registered symbols. A value in the WeakSet may only occur once. It is unique in the WeakSet's collection.

Description

Values of WeakSets must be garbage-collectable. Most can be arbitrarily created and don't have a lifetime, so they cannot be stored. Objects and non-registered symbols can be stored because they are garbage-collectable.

The main differences to the Set object are:

Use case: Detecting circular references

Functions that call themselves recursively need a way of guarding against circular data structures by tracking which objects have already been processed.

WeakSets are ideal for this purpose:

// Execute a callback on everything stored inside an object
function execRecursively(fn, subject, _refs = new WeakSet()) {
  // Avoid infinite recursion
  if (_refs.has(subject)) {
    return;
  }

  fn(subject);
  if (typeof subject === "object" && subject) {
    _refs.add(subject);
    for (const key in subject) {
      execRecursively(fn, subject[key], _refs);
    }
    _refs.delete(subject);
  }
}

const foo = {
  foo: "Foo",
  bar: {
    bar: "Bar",
  },
};

foo.bar.baz = foo; // Circular reference!
execRecursively((obj) => console.log(obj), foo);

Here, a WeakSet is created on the first run, and passed along with every subsequent function call (using the internal _refs parameter).

The number of objects or their traversal order is immaterial, so a WeakSet is more suitable (and performant) than a Set for tracking object references, especially if a very large number of objects is involved.

Constructor

Instance properties

These properties are defined on WeakSet.prototype and shared by all WeakSet instances.

Instance methods

Examples

Using the WeakSet object

const ws = new WeakSet();
const foo = {};
const bar = {};

ws.add(foo);
ws.add(bar);

ws.has(foo); // true
ws.has(bar); // true

ws.delete(foo); // removes foo from the set
ws.has(foo); // false, foo has been removed
ws.has(bar); // true, bar is retained

Note that foo !== bar. While they are similar objects, they are not the same object. And so they are both added to the set.

Specifications

Browser compatibility

See also