How to call javascript functions without parentheses

In this post I’ll explain how to call javascript function without parentheses(it was surprising for me too), I have to say that when I first read about this feature it was really surprising for me,

Using template strings

This is a new and very common feature for ES6, this feature is used for concatenation let’s see an example

let hello = `hello`;
let str = `this is a javascript string ${hello}`;
console.log(str);

Replacing the old fashion syntax used in ES5 for concatenation

var hello = 'hello';
var str = 'this is a javascript string ' + hello;
console.log(str);

ES6 template string was a huge change and improvement for concatenation, I remember concatenating a huge amount of html into a string was time consuming now is readable in many editors and easy to maintain too.

But Template Strings also has another functionality that is not very known for people, and is the main topic of this post, Calling functions without parentheses below an example:

function welcome(name){
    console.log(`Welcome ${name}`);
}

welcome`Jay`
// Welcome Jay
// OR using a space 
welcome `Jay`

Amazing right?, but that’s not the only use you can have with template strings, We also can pass any number of variables to a function concatenated in the string lets see how it works:

let bear = 'bear';
let legs = 4;

// First argument has an array of the strings in the function in this case ?["The ", " has ", " legs"]  
//  Following Arguments has the values of the variables provided in the string in this case ["bear", 4]  
function animal(strings, ...values) {
  console.log(strings[0]); // "The "
  console.log(strings[1]); // "  has "
  console.log(strings[2]); // " legs "
  console.log(values[0]);  // "Bear"
  console.log(values[1]);  // 4
  return "Animal Function!";
}

animal `The ${bear} has ${legs} legs`;

It can be confusing at first but it’s very powerful, hope you have enjoyed the reading leave me a comment in case any question/feedback. H

Have a blessed day :)