Question

I have tried many things to get this working correctly but I can’t

Here is my problem:

I have an array of objects in javascript which looks something like this:

var myArrOfObjs = [];
var myObject1 = {};
myObject1.key = '1234';
myObject1.label = 'Richard Clifford';

myArrOfObjs.push( myObject1 );

and I need to do something like:

if( !containsObject( myObject1, myArrOfOjbs ) ){
    // Do stuff
}

I need the containsObject function to check for key values within the found object (if any), so if containsObject( myObject1, myArrOfOjbs ) finds the object, I need to check to see if the key of that is the same as the one I am currently trying to push.

The reason I need it to check the keys is because I have tried this function which I found else where on StackOverflow, but it isn’t quite working.

function containsObject(obj, list) {
    var i;
    for (i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
        if (list[i] == obj) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}

It still pushes the object to the array even when it already contains the object.

Please let me know if you need anything clearing up, I realise that it isn’t the easiest post to read/understand.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You need to change the equality test to compare the keys:

function containsObject(obj, list) {
    var i;
    for (i = 0; i < list.length; i++) {
        if (list[i].key === obj.key) {
            return true;
        }
    }

    return false;
}