Question

I am new to javascript so sorry I don’t know very much. I have the following and I would like to make it simpler. Any suggestion would be appreciated.

if (entity == "house") {
    primaryKey = store.getItem('accountID') + "02" + "00";
    table = "Content";
}
if (entity == "street") {
    primaryKey = store.getItem('accountID') + "0000";
    table = "Content";
}
if (entity == "city") {
    var primaryKey = store.getItem('categoryID');
    table = "Reference";
}
if (entity == "location") {
    primaryKey = "0001" + store.getItem('examID');
    table = "Content";
}

Answer 1

You could do it with a table driven approach and no repeated code (DRY) like this:

var lookupInfo = {
    house: {id: "accountID", prefix, "", suffix: "0200", table: "Content"},
    street: {id: "accountID", prefix: "", suffix: "0000", table: "Content"},
    city: {id: "categoryID", prefix: "", suffix: "", table: "Reference"},
    location: {id: "examID", prefix: "0001", suffix: "", table: "Content"}
};

var primaryKey, data = lookupInfo[entity];
if (data) {
    primaryKey = data.prefix + store.getItem(data.id) + data.suffix;
    table = data.table;
}

Besides minimizing the code and not repeating any code, it’s also easy to add more options to the table without writing any additional code.

---

Or, the data table can be made a little more compact, though not quite as elegant (from a pure programming point of view because of the hard coded constants) this way:

var lookupInfo = {
    house: ["accountID", "", "0200", "Content"],
    street: ["accountID", "", "0000", "Content"],
    city: ["categoryID", "", "", "Reference"],
    location: ["examID", "0001", "", "Content"]
};

var primaryKey, data = lookupInfo[entity];
if (data) {
    primaryKey = data[1] + store.getItem(data[0]) + data[2];
    table = data[3];
}

Either way, you get the idea of using a lookup table for the entity and then a table driven approach for the different values for each entity.