Question

There is a method in PHP called extract which does exactly what I want to do here. Say I have an object that looks like this:

var data = {
    name: "Olly"
    age: 19
};

I want to run a method like extract(data) so that I can then access the properties in that object by just using name and age, instead of data.name and data.age.

I’ve done a bit of Googling and couldn’t find anything.

Answer 1

You can use something like this:

function myTestFunction() {
    var data = {
        name: "Olly",
        age: 19,
    };
    for (var key in data) {
        this[key] = data[key];
    }
    alert(name +" is "+ age +"!");
}
myTestFunction();

(Try that here: http://jsfiddle.net/dHDxd/3/)

Or even export them to global namespace, by using window[key] = data[key].
In any case, be very very careful with that, since the risk of clobbering the global namespace / override other stuff / etc. is very high.

Update: general-purpose extract()

function extract(data, where) {
    for (var key in data) {
        where[key] = data[key];
    }
}

function runTest() {
    var myData = { name: "Olly", age: 19, };
    extract(myData, this);
    alert(name +" is "+ age +"!");
}

runTest();