javascript - Use of .apply() with 'new' operator. Is this possible?

Question

In JavaScript, I want to create an object instance (via the new operator), but pass an arbitrary number of arguments to the constructor. Is this possible?

What I want to do is something like this (but the code below does not work):

function Something(){
    // init stuff
}
function createSomething(){
    return new Something.apply(null, arguments);
}
var s = createSomething(a,b,c); // 's' is an instance of Something

---

The Answer

From the responses here, it became clear that there's no built-in way to call .apply() with the new operator. However, people suggested a number of really interesting solutions to the problem.

My preferred solution was this one from Matthew Crumley (I've modified it to pass the arguments property):

var createSomething = (function() {
    function F(args) {
        return Something.apply(this, args);
    }
    F.prototype = Something.prototype;

    return function() {
        return new F(arguments);
    }
})();

Answer 1

With ECMAScript5's Function.prototype.bind things get pretty clean:

function newCall(Cls) {
    return new (Function.prototype.bind.apply(Cls, arguments));
    // or even
    // return new (Cls.bind.apply(Cls, arguments));
    // if you know that Cls.bind has not been overwritten
}

It can be used as follows:

var s = newCall(Something, a, b, c);

or even directly:

var s = new (Function.prototype.bind.call(Something, null, a, b, c));

var s = new (Function.prototype.bind.apply(Something, [null, a, b, c]));

This and the eval-based solution are the only ones that always work, even with special constructors like Date:

var date = newCall(Date, 2012, 1);
console.log(date instanceof Date); // true

---

edit

A bit of explanation: We need to run new on a function that takes a limited number of arguments. The bind method allows us to do it like so:

var f = Cls.bind(anything, arg1, arg2, ...);
result = new f();

The anything parameter doesn't matter much, since the new keyword resets f's context. However, it is required for syntactical reasons. Now, for the bind call: We need to pass a variable number of arguments, so this does the trick:

var f = Cls.bind.apply(Cls, [anything, arg1, arg2, ...]);
result = new f();

Let's wrap that in a function. Cls is passed as argument 0, so it's gonna be our anything.

function newCall(Cls /*, arg1, arg2, ... */) {
    var f = Cls.bind.apply(Cls, arguments);
    return new f();
}

Actually, the temporary f variable is not needed at all:

function newCall(Cls /*, arg1, arg2, ... */) {
    return new (Cls.bind.apply(Cls, arguments))();
}

Finally, we should make sure that bind is really what we need. (Cls.bind may have been overwritten). So replace it by Function.prototype.bind, and we get the final result as above.