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FLAVIO COPES
flaviocopes.com
2026

The Object getPrototypeOf() method

By Flavio Copes

Learn how the JavaScript Object.getPrototypeOf() method returns the prototype of an object, and why it returns null for an object that has no prototype.

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Returns the prototype of an object.

Usage:

Object.getPrototypeOf(obj)

Example:

const animal = {}
const dog = Object.create(animal)
const prot = Object.getPrototypeOf(dog)

animal === prot //true

If the object has no prototype, we’ll get null. This is the case of the Object object:

Object.prototype //{}
Object.getPrototypeOf(Object.prototype) //null
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