There are 2 ways of copying objects in any language, deep copy, and shallow copy.
Shallow copy and deep copy are languages agnostic. Shallow copies duplicate as little as possible. A shallow copy of a collection is a copy of the collection structure, not the elements. With a shallow copy, two collections now share the individual elements.
Example
let innerObj = {
a: 'b',
c: 'd'
}
let obj = {
x: "test",
y: innerObj
}
// Create a shallow copy.
let copyObj = Object.assign({}, obj);
// Both copyObj and obj's prop y now refers to the same innerObj. Any changes to this will be reflected.
innerObj.a = "test"
console.log(obj)
console.log(copyObj)Output
This will give the output −
{ x: 'test', y: { a: 'test', c: 'd' } }
{ x: 'test', y: { a: 'test', c: 'd' } }Note that shallow copies do not make clones recursively. It just does it at the top level.
Deep copies duplicate everything. A deep copy of a collection is two collections with all of the elements in the original collection cloned.
Example
let innerObj = {
a: 'b',
c: 'd'
}
let obj = {
x: "test",
y: innerObj
}
// Create a deep copy.
let copyObj = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(obj))
// Both copyObj and obj's prop y now refers to the same innerObj. Any changes to this will be reflected.
innerObj.a = "test"
console.log(obj)
console.log(copyObj)Output
This will give the output −
{ x: 'test', y: { a: 'test', c: 'd' } }
{ x: 'test', y: { a: 'b', c: 'd' } }