Question

I have a name value pair stored as a string that I would like to convert to an object in jQuery or JavaScript. Here is an example of that pair.

{‘auto’:false, ‘itemAWidth’:20, ‘itemBWidth’:20, ‘marginLeft’:0,
‘marginRight’:0, ‘maximumWidth’:0, ‘propW’:5, ‘propX’:5, ‘propY’:null,
‘propZ’:null}

This is being stored as a string. How can I convert this to a proper object? Some of my unsuccessful attempts appear below.

convertValuePairsToObject = function (pairs) {

  var outObject = {};
  var nodes = pairs.split(',');
  for (var node in nodes) {

  }

  //alert(pairs);
  //return jQuery.parseJSON('"' + pairs + '"');
  //      var outObject = {};
  //      //var nodes = pairs.split(','), dest = outObject;
  //      var  = pairs.split(',');
  //      return outObject;
}

When I attempted to use the jQuery.parseJSON() function, the code returned a very long string that started like this.

{‘0’:'{‘, ‘1’:”’, ‘2’:’0′, ‘3’:”’, ‘4’:’:’, ‘5’:”’, ‘6’:'{‘, ‘7’:”’, ‘8’:’,’, ‘9’:’ ‘, ’10’:”’, ’11’:’1′, ’12’:”’, ’13’:’:’, ’14’:”’, ’15’:”’, ’16’:”’, ’17’:’,’, ’18’:’ ‘, ’19’:”’, ’20’:’2′, ’21’:”’, ’22’:’:’, ’23’:”’, ’24’:’a’, ’25’:”’, ’26’:’,’, ’27’:’ ‘, ’28’:”’, ’29’:’3′, ’30’:”’, ’31’:’:’, ’32’:”’, ’33’:’u’, ’34’:”’, ’35’:’,’, ’36’:’ ‘, ’37’:”’, ’38’:’4′, ’39’:”’, ’40’:’:’, ’41’:”’, ’42’:’t’, ’43’:”’, ’44’:’,’, ’45’:’ ‘, ’46’:”’, ’47’:’5′, ’48’:”’, ’49’:’:’, ’50’:”’, ’51’:’o’,

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Edit Below 10:51 AM 1/4/2013

=====================================

So I tried the suggestions you both offered, and have this.

  convertObjectToString = function (obj) {
      return JSON.stringify(obj);
      //      var str = '';
      //      for (var p in obj) {
      //         if (obj.hasOwnProperty(p)) { str += "'" + p + "':" + formatValue(obj[p]) + ", "; }
      //      }
      //      if (str.length > 0) {
      //         str = String(str).substring(0, str.length - 2); // Trim trailing comma
      //         str = '{' + str + '}';
      //      }
      //      return str;
   }

   convertValuePairsToObject = function (pairs) {
      return jQuery.parseJSON('[' + pairs + ']');
   }

But now when convertValuePairsToObject executes, the code pre-pends the name value pairs with this:

{“0”:

And if I repeatedly trigger that function, it will keep pre-pending the above to the string, like so:

{“0”:{“0”:{“0”:

I don’t need that index identifier of zero. How can I eliminate that?

Answer 1

assuming you mean that you get the string like this:

"{'auto':false, 'itemAWidth':20, 'itemBWidth':20, 'marginLeft':0, 'marginRight':0, 'maximumWidth':0, 'propW':5, 'propX':5, 'propY':null, 'propZ':null}"

Then one option would be to use eval like this:

var pairs = "{'auto':false, 'itemAWidth':20, 'itemBWidth':20, 'marginLeft':0, 'marginRight':0, 'maximumWidth':0, 'propW':5, 'propX':5, 'propY':null, 'propZ':null}"

var foo = eval("(" + pairs + ")");

foo is now the actual object and not the string.

Executing console.log(foo); will result in the object tree in the debugger not a string.

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DEMO – get the object from the string

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Alternatively you can convert your object in a string into a proper JSON object and then back into an object using JSON.Parse as mentioned by others.