First, “matt snider” suggests this for default values:
params.item1 = params.item1 || defaultValue1;

However, this is a bug. In cases where you set “item1″ to 0, false, null, empty string (anything that == false), it will be overwritten with defaultValue1. The proper method would be:

params.item1 = params.hasOwnProperty(”item1″) ? params.item1 : 0;

Aside from that, I too am conditioned with PHP… however I love the way you can pass objects in javascript, as the author suggests. PHP, on the contrary, has “default parameters” but the implementation leaves more to be desired. I won’t get into it too much, but heres an example:

//PHP code
function foo($required, $optional1=”some long string”, $optional2=null)

//you cannot “skip” an optional parameter:
foo($some_required_value, ,$not_null); //I wish you could do this… instead you have to write optiona1 out
foo($some_required_value, “some long string”, $not_null); //gets worse with more parameters :(

-sam

function foo() {
if (arguments.length > 1) {
doFoo.apply(this, arguments);
} else {
var args = arguments⁰
doFoo(args.a1, args.a2, args.a3, args.a4, args.a5);
}
}

function doFoo(a1, a2, a3, a4, a5) {

}