Question

Possible Duplicate:
Accessing nested JavaScript objects with string key

I have the function

function _get(name) {
return plugin._optionsObj[name] !== undefined ? 
    plugin._optionsObj[name] : plugin._defaults[name];
}

I would like to be able to have objects inside of my _defaults object, but then I don’t know how to retrieve them but using just one set of square brackets.

i.e.

plugin._defaults = {
    val1: 1,
    val2: 2,
    obj1: {
        someVal: 3
    }
}

Is it possible to access ‘someVal’ from the function I have above? I tried passing ‘obj1.someVal’ for the argument and it didn’t work. Ideas?

Edit: I have found a solution and I posted it below as an answer. I’ve written a very nice little function to do go through the nested values with a string and I didn’t have to change my function much to implement it. I hope this helps anyone in a similar situation.

Answer 1

I found a solution for this problem, at least one that will accommodate myself, and I’d like to share it in case it can help someone else with this problem. My biggest difficulty is that I did not know the depth of the nested value so I wanted to find a solution that would work for deeply nested objects and without requiring to redesign anything.

/* Retrieve the nested object value by using a string. 
   The string should be formatted by separating the properties with a period.
   @param   obj             object to pass to the function
            propertyStr     string containing properties separated by periods
   @return  nested object value. Note: may also return an object */

function _nestedObjVal(obj, propertyStr) {
var properties = propertyStr.split('.');
if (properties.length > 1) {
    var otherProperties = propertyStr.slice(properties[0].length+1);    //separate the other properties
        return _nestedObjVal(obj[properties[0]], otherProperties);  //continue until there are no more periods in the string
} else {
    return obj[propertyStr];
}
}


function _get(name) {
    if (name.indexOf('.') !== -1) {
    //name contains nested object
        var userDefined = _nestedObjVal(plugin._optionsObj, name);
        return userDefined !== undefined ? userDefined : _nestedObjVal(plugin._defaults, name);
    } else {
        return plugin._optionsObj[name] !== undefined ?
        plugin._optionsObj[name] : plugin._defaults[name];
    }
}