Object.keys

By  on  

I adore JavaScript objects.  Love them.  You're probably asking "well, why don't you marry them?"  Trust me:  if I could, I would.  Arrays are nice and all but object keys provide another level of structure and information that is invaluable.  For example, it's much faster search an object for a key than it is to search an array for value presence.

The way we've always iterated on an Object instance was always a for loops with a hasOwnProperty check which was ugly; Object.keys (not Object.prototype.keys) provides an array of Object properties!

var person = {
  firstName: 'David',
  lastName: 'Walsh',
  // ...
};

Object.keys(person).forEach(function(trait) {
  console.log('Person ', trait,': ', person[trait]);
});

If you work with JSON or simply raw JavaScript objects, and you haven't been using Object.keys, now is the time to ditch the old method for this elegant solution!

Recent Features

  • By
    Responsive and Infinitely Scalable JS Animations

    Back in late 2012 it was not easy to find open source projects using requestAnimationFrame() - this is the hook that allows Javascript code to synchronize with a web browser's native paint loop. Animations using this method can run at 60 fps and deliver fantastic...

  • By
    6 Things You Didn’t Know About Firefox OS

    Firefox OS is all over the tech news and for good reason:  Mozilla's finally given web developers the platform that they need to create apps the way they've been creating them for years -- with CSS, HTML, and JavaScript.  Firefox OS has been rapidly improving...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    HTML5 Datalist

    One of the most used JavaScript widgets over the past decade has been the text box autocomplete widget.  Every JavaScript framework has their own autocomplete widget and many of them have become quite advanced.  Much like the placeholder attribute's introduction to markup, a frequently used...

  • By
    dwProgressBar v2:  Stepping and Events

    dwProgressBar was a huge hit when it debuted. For those of you who didn't catch my first post, dwProgressBar is a MooTools 1.2-based progress bar which allows for as much flexibility as possible. Every piece of dwProgressBar can be controlled by CSS...

Discussion

  1. Franz

    Why don’t you use this:

    for (let trait in person){console.log(trait)}
    • Kay.L

      @Franz,
      for..in iterating over NON own properties.

    • Proqz

      Not very well supported http://caniuse.com/#feat=let

    • Proqz

      Also would iterate over prototype properties.

    • Abis Mal

      The for each...in statement is deprecated as the part of ECMA-357 (E4X) standard. E4X support has been removed, but for each...in will not be disabled and removed because of backward compatibility considerations. Consider using for...of instead. (Please refer to bug 791343.)

  2. Also: Use const, not let. The loop creates a new context in each iteration, the loop variable therefore is constant unless your loop-code changes it.

Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!