Question

I have a form that I need to populate with JSON data. The form contains select, textarea, and input elements that need to be populated. The JSON data is complex / hierarchical (i.e. many nested objects).

I am aware of http://www.keyframesandcode.com/code/development/javascript/jquery-populate-plugin/ but it uses square bracket notation to map to field names (e.g.

<input name="person[name][last]" ...

I need to use dot notation though (e.g.

<input name="person.name.last" ...

I’m using jQuery so a jQuery solution is fine. Thanks.

Answer 1

Here’s a hacked together alternative to populate using a recursive function:

function populator(json, nodes){
  $.each(json, function(key, value){
    newNodes = nodes ? nodes.slice() : [];
    newNodes.push(key);

    if (typeof(value)=="object") {
        populator(value, newNodes);
    else
        $('name["' + newNodes.join('.') + '"]').val(value);
    }
  });
}

With this you can do:

populator({
             person: {
                name: {
                   last: 'Doe', 
                   first: 'John'
                },
                address: {
                   street: '123 Main Street',
                   city: 'Montgomery',
                   state: 'AL'
             }
          });