Sort JavaScript object by key

Question

I need to sort JavaScript objects by key.

Hence the following:

{ 'b' : 'asdsad', 'c' : 'masdas', 'a' : 'dsfdsfsdf' }

Would become:

{ 'a' : 'dsfdsfsdf', 'b' : 'asdsad', 'c' : 'masdas' }

Answer 1

A lot of people have mention that "objects cannot be sorted", but after that they are giving you a solution which works. Paradox, isn't it?

No one mention why those solutions are working. They are, because in most of the browser's implementations values in objects are stored in the order in which they were added. That's why if you create new object from sorted list of keys it's returning an expected result.

And I think that we could add one more solution – ES5 functional way:

function sortObject(obj) {
    return Object.keys(obj).sort().reduce(function (result, key) {
        result[key] = obj[key];
        return result;
    }, {});
}

ES2015 version of above (formatted to "one-liner"):

function sortObject(o) {
    return Object.keys(o).sort().reduce((r, k) => (r[k] = o[k], r), {});
}

Short explanation of above examples (as asked in comments):

Object.keys is giving us a list of keys in provided object (obj or o), then we're sorting those using default sorting algorithm, next .reduce is used to convert that array back into an object, but this time with all of the keys sorted.

Answer 2

Here is a clean lodash-based version that works with nested objects

/**
 * Sort of the keys of an object alphabetically
 */
const sortKeys = function(obj) {
  if(_.isArray(obj)) {
    return obj.map(sortKeys);
  }
  if(_.isObject(obj)) {
    return _.fromPairs(_.keys(obj).sort().map(key => [key, sortKeys(obj[key])]));
  }
  return obj;
};

It would be even cleaner if lodash had a toObject() method...

Answer 3

Using lodash this will work:

some_map = { 'b' : 'asdsad', 'c' : 'masdas', 'a' : 'dsfdsfsdf' }

// perform a function in order of ascending key
_(some_map).keys().sort().each(function (key) {
  var value = some_map[key];
  // do something
});

// or alternatively to build a sorted list
sorted_list = _(some_map).keys().sort().map(function (key) {
  var value = some_map[key];
  // return something that shall become an item in the sorted list
}).value();

Just food for thought.

Answer 4

This works for me

/**
 * Return an Object sorted by it's Key
 */
var sortObjectByKey = function(obj){
    var keys = [];
    var sorted_obj = {};

    for(var key in obj){
        if(obj.hasOwnProperty(key)){
            keys.push(key);
        }
    }

    // sort keys
    keys.sort();

    // create new array based on Sorted Keys
    jQuery.each(keys, function(i, key){
        sorted_obj[key] = obj[key];
    });

    return sorted_obj;
};

Answer 5

Pure JavaScript answer to sort an Object. This is the only answer that I know of that will handle negative numbers. This function is for sorting numerical Objects.

Input obj = {1000: {}, -1200: {}, 10000: {}, 200: {}};

function osort(obj) {
var keys = Object.keys(obj);
var len = keys.length;
var rObj = [];
var rK = [];
var t = Object.keys(obj).length;
while(t > rK.length) {
    var l = null;
    for(var x in keys) {
        if(l && parseInt(keys[x]) < parseInt(l)) {
            l = keys[x];
            k = x;
        }
        if(!l) { // Find Lowest
            var l = keys[x];
            var k = x;
        }
    }
    delete keys[k];
    rK.push(l);
}

for (var i = 0; i < len; i++) {

    k = rK[i];
    rObj.push(obj[k]);
}
return rObj;
}

The output will be an object sorted by those numbers with new keys starting at 0.

Answer 6

This is an old question, but taking the cue from Mathias Bynens' answer, I've made a short version to sort the current object, without much overhead.

    Object.keys(unordered).sort().forEach(function(key) {
        var value = unordered[key];
        delete unordered[key];
        unordered[key] = value;
    });

after the code execution, the "unordered" object itself will have the keys alphabetically sorted.