javascript - Alternative to the "switch" Statement

Question

I do not want to use Switch in my code, so I'm looking for some alternative

Example with Switch:

function write(what) {

  switch(what) {

    case 'Blue':
      alert ('Blue');
    break;

    ...

    case 'Red':
      alert ('Red');
    break;

  }

}

Example without Switch:

colors = [];

colors['Blue'] = function() { alert('Blue'); };
colors['Red'] = function() { alert('Red'); };


function write(what) {

  colors[what]();

}

My questions are:

1. Do you know any other alternatives?
2. Is this best solution?

Answer 1

I have only a note about your second approach, you shouldn't use an Array to store non-numeric indexes (that you would call in other languages an associative array).

You should use a simple Object.

Also, you might want to check if the what argument passed to your write function exists as a property of your colors object and see if it's a function, so you can invoke it without having run-time errors:

var colors = {};

colors['Blue'] = function() { alert('Blue'); };
colors['Red'] = function() { alert('Red'); };


function write(what) {
  if (typeof colors[what] == 'function') {
    colors[what]();
    return;
  }
  // not a function, default case
  // ...
}