Question

I have a JSON response like this:

 var errorLog = "[[\"comp\",\"Please add company name!\"],
                 [\"zip\",\"Please add zip code!\"],
                  ...

Which I’m deserializing like this:

 var log = jQuery.parseJSON(errorLog);

Now I can access elements like this:

 log[1][1] > "Please add company name"

Question:
If I have the first value comp, is there a way to directly get the 2nd value by doing:

 log[comp][1]

without looping through the whole array.

Thanks for help!

Answer 1

There are two was to do this, but neither avoids a loop. The first is to loop through the array each time you access the items:

var val = '';
for (var i = 0; i < errorLog.length; i++) {
    if (errorLog[i][0] === "comp") {
        val = errorLog[i][1];
        break;
    }
}

The other would be to work your array into an object and access it with object notation.

var errors = {};
for (var i = 0; i < errorLog.length; i++) {
    errors[errorLog[i][0]] = errorLog[i][1];
}

You could then access the relevant value with errors.comp.

If you’re only looking once, the first option is probably better. If you may look more than once, it’s probably best to use the second system since (a) you only need to do the loop once, which is more efficient, (b) you don’t repeat yourself with the looping code, (c) it’s immediately obvious what you’re trying to do.