[OpenLayers-Dev] destroy

[Tim Schaub]

Hey-

We don't currently have a uniform way of determining if an OpenLayers 
object has been "destroyed".  I'm wondering what people think of adding 
something like this:

OpenLayers.Object.destroy = function(obj) {
     for(var prop in obj) {
         delete obj[prop];
     }
     obj.valueOf = function() {
         return false;
     };
}

Then we could use the following to decide if something has already been 
destroyed:

obj == false // true after OpenLayers.Object.destroy(obj)

Benefits:

We'd have a uniform way of determining if the destroy method had been 
called.

Drawbacks:

This only works for the level of type coercion done by the equality 
operator.  The logical not operator still considers the object truthy 
(so !OpenLayers.Object.destroy(obj) === false).  So, we'd probably still 
end up doing things like this (to test undefined or destroyed):

if(obj && obj != false) {...}

Also, maybe we're better off checking explicitly for properties as we do 
currently (!obj.events etc.)

Any opinions?
Tim

-- 
Tim Schaub
OpenGeo - http://opengeo.org
Expert service straight from the developers.