Question

I have a very complex multidimensional array.

Each item is like (this code shows the var that is pushed to the array):

var arrayItem = {
                'itemId': '00001',
                'itemName': 'Biscuits',
                'parentId': 'Food',
                'children': []
            };

itemId is always unique. The children array is populated with more arrayItem(s). The array can therefore have many levels (possible max 9, but maybe more) – So the base array has x number of objects and each of those can have y number of children objects and so on…

Is there a way to search for a particular itemId. I have tried various .each methods but I can’t seem to search all of the levels of the multidimentional array.

Any help is much appreciated.

Answer 1

Edit:

A few years worth of experience and Array prototype improvements later, here’s how I’d solve the problem:

function find(arr, id) {
    return arr.find(item => item.itemId === id) 
        || arr.reduce((found, curr) => found || find(curr.children, id), undefined)
}

This performs a breadth-first search through the object graph, and returns undefined if it does not contain the ID you’re looking for.

Original answer:

function finder(arr, id){
    arr = [].concat(arr);
    for(var i = 0; i<arr.length; i++){
        if(arr[i].itemId == id){
            return arr[i];
        }else if(arr[i].children.length){
            var val = finder(arr[i].children, id);
            if(val){
                return val;
            }
        }
    }
    return null;        
}

Pass finder your array and the desired ID, and it will find and return the array item with that id.

Use it like this:

var arr = [{
    'itemId': '00001',
        'itemName': 'Biscuits',
        'parentId': 'Food',
        'children': [{
        'itemId': '00002',
            'itemName': 'Sweet',
            'parentId': 'Biscuits',
            'children': [{
            'itemId': '00004',
                'itemName': 'Chocolate',
                'parentId': 'Sweet',
                'children': []
        }]
    }, {
        'itemId': '00003',
            'itemName': 'Salty',
            'parentId': 'Biscuits',
            'children': []
    }]
}];

var chocolate = finder(arr,"00004");

Demo here: http://jsfiddle.net/mVyha/