Question

Is it possible to use a jQuery element object as an array/object key?

Example:

var el = jQuery(this);
var test = {};
test[el] = "something strange";

Doing a:

jQuery.each(test, function(k,v){
    console.log(k);
});

just reports [object Object]

Is there a say that I could actually re-use the k as the original jQuery element object?

Answer 1

No, that is not possible.

ECMAscript only allows for strings as key-values for objects.

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What you could do instead, is to use the id value from a single node instead. So it might look like

var el = jQuery(this);
var test = {};
test[this.id] = "something strange";

That of course requires the node to have an id value.