JavaScript WeakMap Object

The JavaScript WeakMap object is a type of collection which is almost similar to Map. It stores each element as a key-value pair where keys are weakly referenced. Here, the keys are objects and the values are arbitrary values.

The first difference between Map and WeakMap is that keys must be objects, not primitive values:

let weakMap = new WeakMap();

let obj = {};

weakMap.set(obj, "ok"); // works fine (object key)

// can't use a string as the key
weakMap.set("test", "Whoops"); // Error, because "test" is not an object

Now, if we use an object as the key in it, and there are no other references to that object – it will be removed from memory (and from the map) automatically.

let john = { name: "John" };

let weakMap = new WeakMap();
weakMap.set(john, "...");

john = null; // overwrite the reference

// john is removed from memory!

Compare it with the regular Map example above. Now if john only exists as the key of WeakMap – it will be automatically deleted from the map (and memory).

WeakMap does not support iteration and methods keys(), values(), entries(), so there’s no way to get all keys or values from it.

WeakMap has only the following methods:

• weakMap.get(key)
• weakMap.set(key, value)
• weakMap.delete(key)
• weakMap.has(key)

Why such a limitation? That’s for technical reasons. If an object has lost all other references (like john in the code above), then it is to be garbage-collected automatically. But technically it’s not exactly specified when the cleanup happens.

The JavaScript engine decides that. It may choose to perform the memory cleanup immediately or to wait and do the cleaning later when more deletions happen. So, technically, the current element count of a WeakMap is not known. The engine may have cleaned it up or not, or did it partially. For that reason, methods that access all keys/values are not supported.