Question

I need to search an array of objects with an object of search terms and get the index of results in an array.

Let’s say I have an array like this:

[
  {
    name: "Mary",
    gender: "female",
    country: "USA",
    orientation: "straight",
    colorChoice: "red",
    shoeSize: 7
  },
  {
    name: "Henry",
    gender: "male",
    country: "USA",
    orientation: "straight",
    colorChoice: "red",
  },
  {
    name: "Bob",
    colorChoice: "yellow",
    shoeSize: 10
  },
  {
    name: "Jenny",
    gender: "female",
    orientation: "gay",
    colorChoice: "red",
  }
]

Now I need to search the array for:

{
  gender: "female"
}

and get result:

[ 0, 3 ]

The search object can be any length:

{
  gender: "female",
  colorChoice: "red"
}

What’s the cleanest and most performant way to search the array?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Here’s the idea:

function getFemales(myArr){
 var i = myArr.length, ret = [];
 while (i--){
  if ('gender' in myArr[i] && myArr[i].gender === 'female') {
    ret.push(i);
  }
 }
 return ret.sort();
}

see jsfiddle

And more generic:

function findInElements(elArray, label, val){
 var i = elArray.length, ret = [];
 while (i--){
  if (label in elArray[i] && elArray[i][label] === val) {
    ret.push(i);
  }
 }
 return ret.sort();
}

see jsfiddle