Question

What’s the best/standard way of merging two associative arrays in JavaScript? Does everyone just do it by rolling their own for loop?

Answer 1

with jquery you can call $.extend

var obj1 = {a: 1, b: 2};
var obj2 = {a: 4, c: 110};

var obj3 = $.extend(obj1, obj2); 

obj1 == obj3 == {a: 4, b: 2, c: 110} // Pseudo JS

(assoc. arrays are objects in js)

look here: http://api.jquery.com/jQuery.extend/

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edit: Like rymo suggested, it’s better to do it this way:

obj3 = $.extend({}, obj1, obj2); 
obj3 == {a: 4, b: 2, c: 110}

As here obj1 (and obj2) remain unchanged.

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edit2: In 2018 the way to do it is via Object.assign:

var obj3 = Object.assign({}, obj1, obj2); 
obj3 === {a: 4, b: 2, c: 110} // Pseudo JS

If working with ES6 this can be achieved with the Spread Operator:

const obj3 = { ...obj1, ...obj2 };