Elements order in a “for (… in …)” loop

Question

Does the "for…in" loop in Javascript loop through the hashtables/elements in the order they are declared? Is there a browser which doesn't do it in order?
The object I wish to use will be declared once and will never be modified.

Suppose I have:

var myObject = { A: "Hello", B: "World" };

And I further use them in:

for (var item in myObject) alert(item + " : " + myObject[item]);

Can I expect 'A : "Hello"' to always come before 'B : "World"' in most decent browsers?

Answer 1

The elements of an object that for/in enumerates are the properties that don't have the DontEnum flag set. The ECMAScript, aka Javascript, standard explicitly says that "An Object is an unordered collection of properties" (see http://www.mozilla.org/js/language/E262-3.pdf section 8.6).

It's not going to be standards conformant (i.e. safe) to assume all Javascript implementations will enumerate in declaration order.

Answer 2

The order cannot be trusted. Both Opera and Chrome return the list of properties unordered.

<script type="text/javascript">
var username = {"14719":"A","648":"B","15185":"C"};

for (var i in username) {
  window.alert(i + ' => ' + username[i]);
}
</script>

The code above shows B, A, C in Opera and C, A, B in Chrome.

Answer 3

This does not answer the question per se, but offers a solution to the basic problem.

Assuming that you cannot rely on order to preserved, why not use an array of objects with key and value as properties?

var myArray = [
    {
        'key'   : 'key1'
        'value' : 0
    },
    {
        'key'   : 'key2',
        'value' : 0
    } // ...
];

Now, it is up to you to ensure that the keys are unique (assuming that this is also important to you. As well, direct addressing changes, and for (...in...) now returns indexes as 'keys'.

> console.log(myArray[0].key);
key1

> for (let index in myArray) {console.log(myArray[index].value);}
0
1

See the Pen for (...in...) addressing in order by JDQ (@JDQ) on CodePen.

Answer 4

Bumping this a year later...

It is 2012 and the major browsers still differ:

function lineate(obj){
    var arr = [], i;
    for (i in obj) arr.push([i,obj[i]].join(':'));
    console.log(arr);
}
var obj = { a:1, b:2, c:3, "123":'xyz' };
/* log1 */  lineate(obj);
obj.a = 4;
/* log2 */  lineate(obj);
delete obj.a;
obj.a = 4;
/* log3 */  lineate(obj);

gist or test in current browser

Safari 5, Firefox 14

["a:1", "b:2", "c:3", "123:xyz"]
["a:4", "b:2", "c:3", "123:xyz"]
["b:2", "c:3", "123:xyz", "a:4"]

Chrome 21, Opera 12, Node 0.6, Firefox 27

["123:xyz", "a:1", "b:2", "c:3"]
["123:xyz", "a:4", "b:2", "c:3"]
["123:xyz", "b:2", "c:3", "a:4"]

IE9

[123:xyz,a:1,b:2,c:3] 
[123:xyz,a:4,b:2,c:3] 
[123:xyz,a:4,b:2,c:3] 

Answer 5

Iteration order is also confused with respect to deleting of properties, but in this case with IE only.

var obj = {};
obj.a = 'a';
obj.b = 'b';
obj.c = 'c';

// IE allows the value to be deleted...
delete obj.b;

// ...but remembers the old position if it is added back later
obj.b = 'bb';
for (var p in obj) {
    alert(obj[p]); // in IE, will be a, bb, then c;
                   // not a, c, then bb as for FF/Chrome/Opera/Safari
}

The desire for changing the spec to fix the iteration order seems to be quite a popular desire among developers if the discussion at http://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=164 is any indication.

Answer 6

in IE6, the order is not guaranteed.