Get function name in javascript

Question

Hello,

Does anyone know if there is a way to get javascript function name. For example I got a function like

function test1(){
alert(1);
}

I have it in my head section. Then I create an object obj1 and put my function there

obj1.func = test1;

When I call a method in obj1 object, do I have any way to get my function name (test1) inside of this method, except parsing the source (this.func.toString()) of the function.

Answer 1

Functions in Javascript have no name, they are first class citizens, aka objects.

those are equivalent:

function myFunc() {alert("hi");}

myFunc = function() {alert("hi");};

So you need to pass references to function objects around to be able to call them.

In your example you can call

obj1.func()

to execute the function, no need to know the name for that

Answer 2

function test() {  alert(arguments.callee.name); } 
b = test; 
b();

outputs "test" (in Chrome, Firefox and probably Safari)

If you want to get name from outside you may parse it out of:

b.toString();

but I think name property of function object might be what you need:

alert(b.name);

this however does not seem work for IE and Opera so you are left with parsing it out manually in those browsers.

Answer 3

There's no standard way to get the name of a function. Some browsers, notably Firefox and recent WebKit-based browsers, support a non-standard name property on Function objects, but no current version of IE does. The only option this leaves you is trying to parse the name from the function's string representation, which is not a good idea. There's a (long) discussion here about it: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/browse_frm/thread/b85dfb2f2006c9f0