I think I'm not getting setters and getters. Javascript

[dev1214244008]

So, I’m doing right now the project “Team Stats” of “Introduction to JavaScript”, of Codeacademy, and everything’s working fine, but here’s my question, because I think I’m not getting this:

Why can I push something on an array where I’ve only put a getter and not a setter? I though setter where for that, for modifiyng things.

So, here’s my code

const team = {
  _players: [
     {
    firstName: 'Pablo',
    lastName: 'Sanchez',
    age: 11
    }
  ],
  _games : [
    {
    opponent: 'Broncos',
    teamPoints: 42,
    opponentPoints: 27
      }
  ],
  get players() {
    return this._players
  },
  get games (){
    return this._games
  },
  
  addPlayer(firstName,lastName,age) {
   let player = {
    firstName,
    lastName,
    age }
   this.players.push(player)
  }
}

team.addPlayer('Steph', 'Curry', 28)
team.addPlayer('Lisa', 'Leslie', 44)

console.log(team.players)

The line that I’m talking about is this.players.push(player).

Thanks!

[jagking]

The reason this works is because players is returning you _players, which is a reference to an array, so when you add to the array you updating the array that is referenced, not the actual value of _players.

What you cannot do is:

console.log(team.players)
//(3) [{…}, {…}, {…}]
//0: {firstName: "Pablo", lastName: "Sanchez", age: 11}
//1: {firstName: "Steph", lastName: "Curry", age: 28}
//2: {firstName: "Lisa", lastName: "Leslie", age: 44}
//length: 3

team.players = [{
    firstName: 'Pablo',
    lastName: 'Sanchez',
    age: 11
    },
                {
    firstName: 'Pablo1',
    lastName: 'Sanchez',
    age: 11
    }]

console.log(team.players)
//(3) [{…}, {…}, {…}]
//0: {firstName: "Pablo", lastName: "Sanchez", age: 11}
//1: {firstName: "Steph", lastName: "Curry", age: 28}
//2: {firstName: "Lisa", lastName: "Leslie", age: 44}
//length: 3

If you add a basic setter to players to just update the value to _players you would get this:

console.log(team.players)
//(3) [{…}, {…}, {…}]
//0: {firstName: "Pablo", lastName: "Sanchez", age: 11}
//1: {firstName: "Steph", lastName: "Curry", age: 28}
//2: {firstName: "Lisa", lastName: "Leslie", age: 44}
//length: 3

team.players = [{
    firstName: 'Pablo',
    lastName: 'Sanchez',
    age: 11
    },
                {
    firstName: 'Pablo1',
    lastName: 'Sanchez',
    age: 11
    }]

console.log(team.players)
//(2) [{…}, {…}]
//0: {firstName: "Pablo", lastName: "Sanchez", age: 11}
//1: {firstName: "Pablo1", lastName: "Sanchez", age: 11}
//length: 2