Given the following obj:
var inputMapping = {
nonNestedItem: "someItem here",
sections: {
general: "Some general section information"
}
};
I'm writing a function to get
that data by passing in a string "nonNestedItem"
or in the nested case "sections.general"
. I'm having to use an eval
and I was wondering if there was maybe a better way to do this.
Here is what I have so far and it works okay. But improve!
function getNode(name) {
var n = name.split(".");
if (n.length === 1) {
n = name[0];
} else {
var isValid = true,
evalStr = 'inputMapping';
for (var i=0;i<n.length;i++) {
evalStr += '["'+ n[i] +'"]';
if (eval(evalStr) === undefined) {
isValid = false;
break;
}
}
if (isValid) {
// Do something like return the value
}
}
}
Linky to Jsbin
You can use Array.prototype.reduce
function like this
var accessString = "sections.general";
console.log(accessString.split(".").reduce(function(previous, current) {
return previous[current];
}, inputMapping));
Output
Some general section information
If your environment doesn't support reduce
, you can use this recursive version
function getNestedItem(currentObject, listOfKeys) {
if (listOfKeys.length === 0 || !currentObject) {
return currentObject;
}
return getNestedItem(currentObject[listOfKeys[0]], listOfKeys.slice(1));
}
console.log(getNestedItem(inputMapping, "sections.general".split(".")));
You don't need to use eval()
here. You can just use []
to get values from an object. Use a temp object to hold the current value, then update it each time you need the next key.
function getNode(mapping, name) {
var n = name.split(".");
if (n.length === 1) {
return mapping[name];
} else {
var tmp = mapping;
for (var i = 0; i < n.length; i++) {
tmp = tmp[n[i]];
}
return tmp;
}
}