Question

I have a multidimensional array (retdata[R][C]) that basically looks like a spreadsheet of cells. R represents the rows, C the columns. I want to create an array of objects so that I get the following

 [{retdata[1][1]:retdata[2][1],retdata[1][2]:retdata[2][2],retdata[1][3]:retdata[2][3]    }, 
  {retdata[1][1]:retdata[3][1],retdata[1][2]:retdata[3][2],retdata[1][3]:retdata[3][3]    },
  {retdata[1][1]:retdata[4][1],retdata[1][2]:retdata[4][2],retdata[1][3]:retdata[4][3]    }, 
 etc...
]

The resulting array should be:

 [{"Col1":"dataR2C1","Col2":"dataR2C2", "Col3":"dataR2C3"}, 
 {"Col1":"dataR3C1","Col2":"dataR3C2", "Col3":"dataR3C3"}, 
 {"Col1":"dataR4C1","Col2":"dataR4C2", "Col3":"dataR4C3"}, 
 etc...
]

I have tried a number of options without success. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Here is one example I have used but it id not serializing the objects properly.

                var TABLE = [];
                for (var i=2; i<=rows; i++) {
                    var ROW = {};                       
                    for (var j=1; j<=columns; j++){
                        name = retdata[1][j].toString;
                        value = retdata[i][j].toString;
                        ROW += {name: value}
                    }

                TABLE += ROW;   

                }

Answer 1

This is like a CSV-parser, the first row of your table are the keys for the line-objects. Your function would work, but you need to correct your array indices: they always start at 0, running up to n-1. Also, you need to learn a bit JavaScript syntax:

• something.toString does not call the toString function on that value, but gets that function (it’s just an object).
• You don’t need toString at all – where needed, values are automatically casted
• You can’t add key-value-pairs to object with a simple operator. You will need to assign the value to that property of an object, with the bracket notation. The += operator would have casted the values to strings and concatenated them.
• It’s the same with arrays. You could use the .push() method, or just assign to a numerical key – the javascript array object will automatically update its length.

var retdata = […];

var table = [],
    keys = retdata.shift(); // get & remove the first row
for (var i=0; i<retdata.length; i++) {
    var row = {};
    for (var j=0; j<retdata[i].length; j++)
        row[ keys[j] ] = retdata[i][j];
    table[i] = row;
}