Question

I have a javascript application, that calls an api, and the api returns json. With the json, I select a specific object, and loop through that.

My code flow is something like this:
Service call -> GetResults
Loop through Results and build Page

The problem though, is sometimes that api returns only one result, so that means it returns an object instead of an array, so I cant loop through results. What would be the best way to go around this?

Should i convert my object, or single result to an arrary? Put/Push it inside an array? or should I do a typeof and check if the element is an array, then do the looping?

Thanks for the help.

//this is what is return when there are more than one results
var results = {
pages:  [
        {"pageNumber":204},
        {"pageNumber":1024},
        {"pageNumber":3012}
    ]
}

//this is what is returned when there is only one result
var results = {
    pages: {"pageNumber": 105}
}

My code loops through results, just using a for loop, but it will create errors, since sometimes results is not an array. So again, do I check if its an array? Push results into a new array? What would be better. Thanks

Answer 1

If you have no control over the server side, you could do a simple check to make sure it’s an array:

if (!(results.pages instanceof Array)) {
    results.pages = [results.pages];
}

// Do your loop here.

Otherwise, this should ideally happen on the server; it should be part of the contract that the results can always be accessed in a similar fashion.