Question

I am looking to store the following data structure:

TIMESTAMP | NAME | COUNTS

For each time stamp, there can be multiple names, and each name has a list of counts:

123456 | EXAMPLE1 | 1,2,3,4
       | EXAMPLE2 | 4,3,2,1
       | EXAMPLE3 | 9,7,4,3

I would like to store the timestamp as an object index so that I can access it when I know the timestamp. This also eliminates any issues with array size limits and defining etc.

What I dont know is how to create a list of “names” for each timestamp, and for each name I would like to store a list of counts.

Can anyone advise how I can create this data structure and access all counts for a specific timestamp and name?

So far I have this:

dataObj[timestamp] = new Array(name,[count]);

But i have 2 questions:

1) How would I test to see if I already have the name?

2) How would I add another name array?

Appreciate any comments.

Regards, Ben.

Answer 1

Given a timestamp, a name, and a count:

// if we haven't seen this timestamp, create a new object for it
dataObj[timestamp] = dataObj[timestamp] || {}; 

// if we haven't seen this name yet in this time stamp, create a new array for it
dataObj[timestamp][name] = dataObj[timestamp][name] || []; 

// add this count to the array
dataObj[timestamp][name].push(count);

If you get all the counts for a given timestamp/name pair at once, you can combine the last two statements into one:

dataObj[timestamp][name] = countsArray;