- 01Setting Up (What You'll Need)
- 02Creating Variables
- 03Conditionals (if Statements)
- 04Loops (for Statements)
- 05Creating Functions
- 06Working with Arrays
- 07Working with Objects
- 08Loops (while Statements)
- 09Working with Strings
- 10Using Classes (Object-Oriented Programming)
- 11Error Handling (try...catch)
- 12Destructuring and the Spread Syntax
- 13Async Code (Promise / async & await)
- 14Advanced Array Methods (filter and reduce)
- 15The switch Statement
- 16The Ternary Operator
- 17Inheritance (Extending Classes)
- 18How to Write Comments
- 19Logical Operators (AND, OR, NOT)
- 20Constants (Making Read-Only Values with const)
- 21Splitting and Joining Strings (split and join)
- 22Null-Safe Syntax (?? and ?.)
- 23Searching Arrays and Collections (includes and find)
- 24Transforming Arrays with map
- 25Two-Dimensional Arrays (Table-Shaped Data)
- 26Building a Custom Error Class
- 27Default Arguments (Setting Initial Values for Parameters)
- 28Using Set (Collections)
- 29Verifying Correctness with assert (Your First Step Into Testing)
- 30Higher-Order Functions (Passing a Function as an Argument)
- 31Stacks and Queues (Basic Data Structures)
- 32The Basics of Type Conversion (Casting)
- 33Introduction to Regular Expressions (Pattern Matching)
- 34The Binary Search Algorithm
- 35Building a Caesar Cipher (a Letter-Shifting Cipher)
- 36Understanding How Bubble Sort Works
- 37Building and Displaying Dates (Basic Year/Month/Day Operations)
- 38Writing Several Unit Tests Together (Multiple Test Cases)
- 39Speeding Up Calculations with Memoization (Caching)
- 40Normalizing Strings (trim and Case Unification)
- 41The Difference Between Shallow Copy and Deep Copy
- 42The Basics of Enums (Enumerated Types)
- 43Flattening Arrays (flatten)
- 44Reversing a String and Checking for a Palindrome
- 45Pairing Up Two Arrays (a zip Operation)
- 46Rounding Numbers (floor, ceil, and round)
- 47Multi-Line Strings (Template Literals)
- 48Returning Multiple Values from a Function (Array Destructuring)
- 49Finding the GCD and LCM (the Euclidean Algorithm)
- 50Formatting Numbers (Digit Alignment and Decimal Precision)
- 51Cleanup Processing with try/catch/finally
- 52Writing Type-Agnostic, General-Purpose Functions
- 53The Basics of Map (an Object for Key-Value Pairs)
- 54Generating Random Numbers
- 55Bitwise Operations (AND, OR, XOR, and Shift Operations)
- 56Using static (Static Class Properties and Methods)
- 57Waiting a Fixed Amount of Time (setTimeout and await)
- 58Watch Out for Floating-Point Rounding Error
- 59Transforming and Flattening at Once with flatMap()
- 60FizzBuzz (the Classic Practice Problem)
- 61Checking Whether a Number Is Prime
- 62Set Operations with Set (Union, Intersection, and Difference)
- 63Converting Number Bases (Binary and Hexadecimal)
- 64Checking That Brackets Match (an Application of Stacks)
- 65Checking for an Anagram
- 66Checking Whether a Year Is a Leap Year
- 67Converting Temperature (Celsius ⇄ Fahrenheit)
- 68Finding the Prime Factorization
- 69[Applied] Build a Simple To-Do List Tool
The Basics of Enums (Enumerated Types)
In this lesson you'll learn how to reproduce an Enum (enumerated type) in JavaScript so you can safely handle a fixed set of choices. This is for people searching "JavaScript how to write an Enum" or "JavaScript Object.freeze usage."
JavaScript doesn't have a dedicated Enum syntax, but you can reproduce an "enumerated type" representing a fixed set of choices by using Object.freeze() to create an object that can't be modified. It's used when you want to limit a value's kind ahead of time, like "a traffic light only has red, blue, and yellow." Using named constants communicates intent more clearly than writing strings or numbers directly all over your code (something called a "magic number").
The sample code freezes an object called Color with Object.freeze(), giving it just three choices: RED, GREEN, and BLUE. You can pull out a value with Color.RED, and you can also get all the choices as an array with Object.values(Color).
A common beginner stumbling block is building an Enum as a plain, ordinary object without Object.freeze(), which allows its values to be changed later. To protect the intent of a "fixed set of choices," you must always freeze it. This also prevents typos, making it safer than writing strings directly all over the place.
In real development, this idea is used for handling values that have "only a fixed set of kinds," like an order's status (processing, shipped, complete) or a user's permission level. In a language called TypeScript, Enum is provided as a standard feature, making it another option worth knowing about if you want more rigorous type safety.
💡 Anything passed to console.log() appears in the output below.