Creating a struct of arrays in Javascript - javascript

I have a variable called jsonAllSignOffs that is created by a .NET JSON service and sent to the client. It is essentially a struct containing various arrays. The values of these arrays are arranged such that if you took the nth element of each array, all together that would be the collected properties of the nth Sign Off. Obviously a list of Sign Off objects containing these properties would be better, but unfortunately this is a legacy application and changing it's architecture in this manner is out of scope.
What I'm trying to do is create a variable called jsonUserSignOffs that is essentially a subset of jsonAllSignOffs with all the same properties. However jsonAllSignOffs is not a type that I can instantiate. I figured declaring a variable and assuming the properties by assigning into them would "build" the object, but apparently that's not the case.
var jsonUserSignOffs;
jsonUserSignOffs.isAuthor = jsonAllSignOffs.isAuthor; //error jsonUserSignOffs is undefined
Since javascript doesn't support classes and is pretty lax with variables I figured the only way to create a struct like jsonAllSignOffs was to declare the variable and assign values to it's properties. I know these properties are not defined anywhere, but I thought assigning values to them would instantiate them at the same time. I come from a C# background where I would use a class. Javascript is less familiar to me, and I'm unclear on how to proceed.

Try this
var jsonUserSignOffs = {}; //creates an empty object using object literal notation
jsonUserSignOffs.isAuthor = jsonAllSignOffs.isAuthor;
OR:
var jsonUserSignOffs = {
isAuthor: jsonAllSignOffs.isAuthor
};

Related

Javascript changes value of three objects at once

This is my code and I am trying to change value of object in packs object. But when I type it, Javascript somehow changes all three different objects, that have nothing in common. And this is the only line that changes packs, rest should stay the same, but it's all changing with this line. How?
console.log(packs[usedPack].levels[level].bestBy) //null
console.log(defaultPack.levels[level].bestBy) //null
console.log(mainPacks[usedPack].levels[level].bestBy) //null
packs[usedPack].levels[level].bestBy = nameTyped; //this changes values in three different objects
//packs[usedPack].levels[level] = nameTyped; //if I type like this, this does change only original object, rest stays the same
console.log(packs) //nameTyped
console.log(defaultPack) //nameTyped
console.log(mainPacks) //nameTyped
Edit: It was indeed problem with referencing. I was using constructor function and this function needed to deep copy complex objects. I was checking values and I used multiple loops to copy all values from objects, but it didn't work properly. I've changed all of this to JSON.parse(JSON.stringify()), and it's working now. Thanks for help.
The issue here seems like you're assigning some object by its reference.
In javascript, if you have two objects and you assign them like
a = b;
Now whenever you will change b, a will also be changed. To avoid this we do deep clone using the spread operator
// this now does not reference to b but clones it
a = {...b}
In your code, you might be assigning some objects like this. a=b
Maybe you're assigning packs, defaultPack, and mainPacks using some same object.
Updated
#David pointed out one thing and that is if you are having some complex structure (like objects within object) and then you clone it using spread operator, the inner objects will still reference the same object.
To resolve this, for easiness you can use lodash deepclone function
const clonedeep = require('lodash/clonedeep');
const deepClonedObject = clonedeep(originalObject);
This will deep clone and even if the objects are nested they won't refer to the same object.

Having trouble with assigning scope to variable to manipulate

Attempting to assign a scope object to a JavaScript variable to do minor manipulation before sending to my API. However, any changes made to the JavaScript variable change the scope object.
var recruitingCallListOutput = $scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit;
// manipulation of recruitingCallListOutput
The manipulation actually still updates the scope object which is not desired. Feel I am not understanding something in AngularJS correctly. Is there a way to grab the data and detach it from the scope?
In your example, recruitingCallListOutput is a reference to $scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit (see https://codeburst.io/explaining-value-vs-reference-in-javascript-647a975e12a0 for more detail.) You will want to make a copy of $scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit.
If Recruit is a shallow object, meaning no nested objects (property values are primitives only), you can simply do
var recruitingCallListOutput = Object.assign({}, $scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit);
If you have nested objects/arrays as property values, you'll need to deep copy. It's been a while since I have been in the angular world, but
var recruitingCallListOutput = angular.copy($scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit)
you could actually use angular.copy in both examples.
This is nothing to do with AngularJS. It's Javascript, and it's expected behaviour.
For example, if you open the browser console (F12->Console) right now and run this:
var foo = {x:1};
var copy=foo;
copy.x=2;
console.log(foo.x);
you will see {x:2} printed out.
This is the same behaviour you would expected for any object reference in Javascript, C#, Java, etc. Because you are making a reference and not a copy, any changes to the reference are actually changes to the original.
The simplest way to solve this problem in your case is to copy the values you are interested in from the item in question into a totally separate object and modify that copy.
e.g.
var recruitingCallListOutput = {
name: $scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit.name,
age:$scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit.age,
modifiedSomething: $scope.RecrutingCallingList.Recruit.something + 42 //or whatever modifications you need to make
...and so on.
};
There are ways to "clone" an object in Javascript but unless your object is really really complex I would be careful. And consider if you really need all of the properties of the original object anyway, perhaps you only need to send some of them to your backend.

Using a dynamically created variable to access named object in an object

finalVariables() returns an object that contains data accessible by .dataName notation i.e. finalVariables().mainViewWindow0 returns the string stored for mainViewWindow0. I'm trying to access mainViewWindow0 using a dynamically created variable, but for obvious reasons this doesn't work so well with dot notation, but I don't know how to work around it. Help to be had for me?
Please ignore the poor coding practice of having a hard-coded number in there; I promise to get rid of it later
activePane = dot.id.substring(6); //gets dot # and sets it as active pane
var tempForPaneNumber = "mainViewWindow" + activePane + "";
document.getElementById("mainViewWindowContent").innerHTML = finalVariables().###this is where I want to use
the string from "tempForPaneNumber" to access ###
finalVariables[tempForPainNumber]()
Should do the trick if I understand correctly.
In Javascript you can access properties of an object either through the dot notation or through the use of brackets to specify the identifier for the property so myVar.foo is equivalent to myVar['foo']. Therefore, if I understand what you are asking correctly you want to use finalVariables()[tempForPaneNumber]()

General JavaScript Doubts

In C++ I have learned that Variables are the used for Data Storage and Objects are the instance of a Class. But in JavaScript I have seen people referring variables as an Object. Why are the Variables referred as Objects in JavaScript. I am getting confused with that.
In javascript, a variable can either hold a single piece of data itself (like the number 3 or a text string like "Having Fun") or it can hold a reference to an entity like an array or an object.
An object in javascript is essentially a container in javascript. It can hold multiple properties that are each accessed with a key. For example, an object could have a property named "name" that contains the value "Bob", it could also contain a property named "Age" with a value of 29. Objects can have as many properties as one wants. As such objects are essentially a collection of multiple variables, where each variable has its own name and value.
There are technically no "classes" in javascript so it doesn't work the same way that C++ does. Javascript uses prototypes and objects instead of classes and instances in C++.
In reference to the specifics of your question, a variable can contain a value or a reference to an object. There is no right or wrong, it depends upon the problem to be solved.
Some examples:
var person = {}; // a variable `person` that contains a reference to an empty object
person.name = "Bob"; // add a property "name" and value to the object
person.age = 29; // add a property "age" and value to the object
var numPeople = 12; // a variable that just contains a number
Javascript is prototype based OOP language.
Prototype-based programming is a style of object-oriented programming
in which classes are not present, and behavior reuse (known as
inheritance in class-based languages) is performed via a process of
cloning existing objects that serve as prototypes.
In Javascript we use DOcument Object Model(DOM) for refering to different elements of web page.
so when we refer to window,document,form they all are objects and variables are declared like
var x=0;
following will be example of object assignment.
var w=window;

Programatically output variable and object names as literal text strings

I'd really like to track variables without switching between Firebug console windows or clicking around so much, so I want to draw a runtime viewer of variable names and their corresponding values that will display on the page of the app I am building.
I'd like to two functions, show(variableName) and freeze(variableName). They will output both the variable's value and the name of the variable or object as a literal string which will serve as the text label in the viewer. freeze(variableName) is the same as show(variableName) except with a setTimeOut timer for tracking loops.
I'm sure I'm missing something basic, but I haven't found out a way to get the string that comprises the name of a value programmatically so I can use it as a label. I guess I could create the table with hardcoded labels prior to runtime and just populate it with values at runtime, but I really want to generate the table dynamically so it only has those variables I specifically want to show or freeze. Simple functions:
foo1 = "Rock";
show(foo1);
foo2 = "Paper";
show(foo2);
foo3 = "Scissors";
show(foo3);
should output this via getElementById('viewer-table'):
<table>\<tr><td>foo1</td><td>Rock</td></tr><tr><td>foo2</td><td>Paper</td></tr><tr><td>foo3</td><td>Scissors</td></tr></table>
I've tried this solution:
How to convert variable name to string in JavaScript?
and eval() but it's not working for me...I dunno, shouldn't this be easy? Getting frustrated...
Thanks,
motorhobo
I am not sure you can actually get the "name" of the variable that is being passed into a function for two reasons:
1) The variable is just an identifier. In fact, you could have multiple identifiers reference the exact same object. You are (generally) passing that reference, not any actual object.
2) The show/freeze function is going to stomp on the identifier name, either through named arguments in the function declaration or by referencing them through the arguments array.
I was trying to think if there was some clever way to use the arguments.callee or the stack property on an exception in Firefox... but I can't see anything that would expose the arguments as you desire.
What I would recommend is to simply add the name of the variable and its value to a simple object, and call one of the various jsDump methods (I prefer the one in QUnit):
function show(o) {
document.getElementById("viewer-table").innerHTML = QUnit.jsDump(o);
}
// actually use the method
show({"foo1":foo1});
There's no easy way to solve this as the called function simply doesn't know the original name of the variable. You couldn't solve this with reflection even (esp. in javascript) so you'll have to pass the name of the variable to the function too. To follow the link you posted:
function show(varObject)
{
for(name in varObject)
{
alert(name + ": " + varObject[name]);
// save both name and reference to the variable to a local "to observe array"
}
}
And call it with
var test = "xxx";
show({'test' : test});
Within the for loop you could add easy variable to a monitor array and update your gui in fixed time intervalls (you can't be notifed when a signle variable changes it's value. You need some kind of global monitor/observer which exactly you're trying to create).

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