Question

I have an object with a single property, which name I do not know.

Using pure javascript, is the following really the shortest way to get the value of this property?

obj[Object.keys(obj)[0]]

Seems like an awful lot. Is there any better alternative? Again not using any JS libraries.

Answer 1

In your described scenario (having an object with one key, which you don’t know), yes, that is the shortest way of accessing it.

I don’t feel its a lot, given the circumstances by the way. Be aware tho that this will only work on ES5 enabled browsers. Without ES5, it will become a lot more:

var propName;
for( var prop in obj ) {
    if( obj.hasOwnProperty( prop ) ) {
        propName = prop;
        // break;
    }
}

obj[propName];