Question

From a service I receive a JSON object with key-value pairs, and I need to dynamically create objects from them, grouped by one column.

The JSON looks like this:

[
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "John" },
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "30" },
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "London" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "Hans" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "35" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "Berlin" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "José" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "25" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "Madrid" }
]

I would need to transform it to the following array of objects:

[
    { Group : "A", Name : "John", Age : 30, City : "London" },
    { Group : "B", Name : "Hans", Age : 35, City : "Berlin" },
    { Group : "C", Name : "José", Age : 25, City : "Madrid" }
]

Each group can contain any number of key-value pairs.

Currently I have a working solution for this, but I don’t know if it’s optimal:

var items = [
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "John" },
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "30" },
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "London" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "Hans" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "35" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "Berlin" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "José" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "25" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "Madrid" }
], item, record, hash = {}, results = [];

// Create a "hash" object to build up
for (var i = 0, len = items.length; i < len; i += 1) {
    item = items[i];

  if (!hash[item.Group]) {
    hash[item.Group] = {
      Group : item.Group
    };
  }
  hash[item.Group][item.Key] = item.Value;
}

// Push each item in the hash to the array
for (record in hash) {
  if(hash.hasOwnProperty(record)) {
    results.push(hash[record]);
  }
}

You can check the fiddle here: http://jsbin.com/ozizom/1/

Do you have a better solution for this?

Answer 1

Assuming that the JSON records will always be sorted by Group, here is another approach:

var json = [
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "John" },
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "30" },
    { "Group" : "A", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "London" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "Hans" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "35" },
    { "Group" : "B", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "Berlin" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "Name", "Value" : "José" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "Age",  "Value" : "25" },
    { "Group" : "C", "Key" : "City", "Value" : "Madrid" }
];

var array = [];
var previousGroup = null;

for(var i=0; i<json.length; i++) {
    var group = json[i].Group;
    if(previousGroup != group) {
        array.push({Group: group});
        previousGroup = group;
    }
    array[array.length-1][json[i].Key] = json[i].Value;
}

Here is a working example.