A great example illustrating LSP (given by Uncle Bob in a podcast I heard recently) was how sometimes something that sounds right in natural language doesn't quite work in code.
In mathematics, a Square
is a Rectangle
. Indeed it is a specialization of a rectangle. The "is a" makes you want to model this with inheritance. However if in code you made Square
derive from Rectangle
, then a Square
should be usable anywhere you expect a Rectangle
. This makes for some strange behavior.
Imagine you had SetWidth
and SetHeight
methods on your Rectangle
base class; this seems perfectly logical. However if your Rectangle
reference pointed to a Square
, then SetWidth
and SetHeight
doesn't make sense because setting one would change the other to match it. In this case Square
fails the Liskov Substitution Test with Rectangle
and the abstraction of having Square
inherit from Rectangle
is a bad one.

Y'all should check out the other priceless SOLID Principles Motivational Posters.
Native deep cloning
It's called "structured cloning", works experimentally in Node 11 and later, and hopefully will land in browsers. See this answer for more details.
Fast cloning with data loss - JSON.parse/stringify
If you do not use Date
s, functions, undefined
, Infinity
, RegExps, Maps, Sets, Blobs, FileLists, ImageDatas, sparse Arrays, Typed Arrays or other complex types within your object, a very simple one liner to deep clone an object is:
JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(object))
const a = {
string: 'string',
number: 123,
bool: false,
nul: null,
date: new Date(), // stringified
undef: undefined, // lost
inf: Infinity, // forced to 'null'
re: /.*/, // lost
}
console.log(a);
console.log(typeof a.date); // Date object
const clone = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(a));
console.log(clone);
console.log(typeof clone.date); // result of .toISOString()
See Corban's answer for benchmarks.
Reliable cloning using a library
Since cloning objects is not trivial (complex types, circular references, function etc.), most major libraries provide function to clone objects. Don't reinvent the wheel - if you're already using a library, check if it has an object cloning function. For example,
- lodash -
cloneDeep
; can be imported separately via the lodash.clonedeep module and is probably your best choice if you're not already using a library that provides a deep cloning function
- AngularJS -
angular.copy
- jQuery -
jQuery.extend(true, { }, oldObject)
; .clone()
only clones DOM elements
- just library -
just-clone
; Part of a library of zero-dependency npm modules that do just do one thing.
Guilt-free utilities for every occasion.
ES6 (shallow copy)
For completeness, note that ES6 offers two shallow copy mechanisms: Object.assign()
and the spread syntax.
which copies values of all enumerable own properties from one object to another. For example:
var A1 = {a: "2"};
var A2 = Object.assign({}, A1);
var A3 = {...A1}; // Spread Syntax
Best Solution
Yes. In fact Axel Schreiner provides his book "Object-oriented Programming in ANSI-C" for free which covers the subject quite thoroughly.