Hello, object!

Each player rolls dice and gets game points. Everything is working, but note the number of parameters in the runGame function. What happens if there are three, four, five, ten players? And if we get more characteristics for each player? The answer is obvious: a function with forty-two parameters. But we won’t do it this way.

Each cat has related information: a name and points. Is there a more convenient way to store values ​​related to one entity? Yes! We’ll use objects.

An object is a data type that stores information as key-value pairs. An array gives each element a numbered index, while an object lets us access values by their keys. In this example, we use those keys rather than rely on the order of properties. Let’s look at an example.

First, we must create an object. To do this, use the curly brackets that you are already familiar with { }. Store the object in a variable, choosing its name just as you would for any other variable.

var cat = {};
// This creates an object and stores it in the variable cat

Next, we’ll add properties. The key-value pairs that the object contains are called properties or attributes. They look like this:

var cat = {
  name: 'Muffin',
  // We added a new property where the name is key, and 'Muffin' is a value
  age: 5
  // New property. The key is age, the value is 5
};

Properties are referred to by the name of the key. That is, we can say that the cat object has a property for storing the name, where the key is name, and the value is 'Muffin', or that the cat object has the name property with value 'Muffin'.

Several syntax rules:

• The key is separated from the value by a colon.
• Key-value pairs are separated from each other by commas.
• Values ​​can be any type of data (number, string, array, and so on).

Let’s create players’ objects instead of a set of variables. Each player will have two properties: one for the name and one for game points.