Symbols Are Your Friend Part II: Symbol.for() & Symbol.keyFor()

In Part I we looked at the Symbol constructor and general use cases. In this second episode, we'll explore the 2 static Symbol methods, Symbol.for() and Symbol.keyFor(). Don't worry, we'll finally get to the (in)famous Symbol.iterator in due time.

These 2 methods are known as "static" methods because they can only be called from the class itself and cannot be accessed via an instance of a class:

class myClass {
  static greeting() {
    console.log('Hello world!');
  }
}

myClass.greeting() // Logs "Hello world!"

const foo = new myClass();
foo.greeting(); // Logs a TypeError

With that out of the way, let's look at Symbol.for(). The syntax for this method is:

Symbol.for(key); // The key is a string that identifies the symbol

While Symbol() always creates a brand new, totally unique value, Symbol.for() will do one of 2 things:

1) If there is no symbol created with the given key, a new symbol is created.
2) Otherwise the method will return the existing symbol with the provided key.

Symbol.for('abc'); // Create a new symbol w/ "abc" as the key
Symbol.for('abc'); // Retrieve existing "abc" symbol

Although this looks similar to Symbol(), Symbol.for()'s argument functions as both the key to search for (or create) and the description:

const weaponSymbol1 = Symbol.for('knife');
const weaponSymbol2 = Symbol('club');

console.log(weaponSymbol1.description); // "knife"
console.log(weaponSymbol2.description); // "club"

This is an important distinction as Symbol()'s argument is only a description:

const s1 = Symbol('abc'); // Create unique symbol
const s2 = Symbol.for('abc'); // No symbol with "abc" key so create one

s1 === s2; // false
s2 === Symbol.for('abc'); // true

Moving on to Symbol.keyFor(), this one is more straightforward as it simply returns the key of a provided symbol as a string:

const weaponSymbol = Symbol.for('sword');
Symbol.keyFor(weaponSymbol); // "sword"

Note that Symbol.keyFor() only looks for symbols created with a key created via Symbol.for() and the descriptions you create with Symbol() do not provide a searchable key:

const weaponSymbol = Symbol('sword');
Symbol.keyFor(weaponSymbol); // undefined

So that's Symbol.for() and Symbol.keyFor(). These methods give you greater flexibility in determining just how "unique" you want your symbols to be (with plain Symbol() being the most unique). We'll take a look at some of Symbol's static properties in the next article. Betcha can't wait! 😉

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