[javascript] JavaScript Object Id

I've just come across this, and thought I'd add my thoughts. As others have suggested, I'd recommend manually adding IDs, but if you really want something close to what you've described, you could use this:

var objectId = (function () {
    var allObjects = [];

    var f = function(obj) {
        if (allObjects.indexOf(obj) === -1) {
            allObjects.push(obj);
        }
        return allObjects.indexOf(obj);
    }
    f.clear = function() {
      allObjects = [];
    };
    return f;
})();

You can get any object's ID by calling objectId(obj). Then if you want the id to be a property of the object, you can either extend the prototype:

Object.prototype.id = function () {
    return objectId(this);
}

or you can manually add an ID to each object by adding a similar function as a method.

The major caveat is that this will prevent the garbage collector from destroying objects when they drop out of scope... they will never drop out of the scope of the allObjects array, so you might find memory leaks are an issue. If your set on using this method, you should do so for debugging purpose only. When needed, you can do objectId.clear() to clear the allObjects and let the GC do its job (but from that point the object ids will all be reset).