The typical way of creating a Javascript object is the following:
var map = new Object();
map[myKey1] = myObj1;
map[myKey2] = myObj2;
I need to create such a map where both keys and values are Strings. I have a large but static set of pairs to add to the map.
Is there any way to perform something like this in Javascript:
var map = { { "aaa", "rrr" }, { "bbb", "ppp" } ... };
or do I have to perform something like this for each entry:
map["aaa"]="rrr";
map["bbb"]="ppp";
...
Basically, remaining Javascript code will loop over this map and extract values according to criterias known 'at runtime'. If there is a better data structure for this looping job, I am interested too. My objective is to minimize code.
JavaScript's object literal syntax, which is typically used to instantiate objects (seriously, no one uses new Object
or new Array
), is as follows:
var obj = {
'key': 'value',
'another key': 'another value',
anUnquotedKey: 'more value!'
};
For arrays it's:
var arr = [
'value',
'another value',
'even more values'
];
If you need objects within objects, that's fine too:
var obj = {
'subObject': {
'key': 'value'
},
'another object': {
'some key': 'some value',
'another key': 'another value',
'an array': [ 'this', 'is', 'ok', 'as', 'well' ]
}
}
This convenient method of being able to instantiate static data is what led to the JSON data format.
JSON is a little more picky, keys must be enclosed in double-quotes, as well as string values:
{"foo":"bar", "keyWithIntegerValue":123}
In ES2015 a.k.a ES6 version of JavaScript, a new datatype called Map
is introduced.
let map = new Map([["key1", "value1"], ["key2", "value2"]]);
map.get("key1"); // => value1
check this reference for more info.
It works fine with the object literal notation:
var map = { key : { "aaa", "rrr" },
key2: { "bbb", "ppp" } // trailing comma leads to syntax error in IE!
}
Btw, the common way to instantiate arrays
var array = [];
// directly with values:
var array = [ "val1", "val2", 3 /*numbers may be unquoted*/, 5, "val5" ];
and objects
var object = {};
Also you can do either:
obj.property // this is prefered but you can also do
obj["property"] // this is the way to go when you have the keyname stored in a var
var key = "property";
obj[key] // is the same like obj.property
Give this a try:
var map = {"aaa": "rrr", "bbb": "ppp"};
The syntax you wrote as first is not valid. You can achieve something using the follow:
var map = {"aaa": "rrr", "bbb": "ppp" /* etc */ };