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javascriptjqueryarrays
Malyo
Malyo

Reputation: 2000

Javascript Array inside Array - how can I call the child array name?

Here is the example of what I am doing:

   var size = new Array("S", "M", "L", "XL", "XXL");
   var color = new Array("Red", "Blue", "Green", "White", "Black");
   var options = new Array( size, color);

I am doing a loop select form thingies which work good, but I want to fetch the Array child name, in this case - size or color. When I am doing alert(options[0]), I get the whole elements of array. But for some specific case, I want to get only the array name, which is size/color like I have said already. Is there way to achieve that?

Upvotes: 21

Views: 143228

Answers (8)

gargamel
gargamel

Reputation: 1

Array is just like any other object. You can give it a name if you want.

var size = new Array("S", "M", "L", "XL", "XXL");
var color = new Array("Red", "Blue", "Green", "White", "Black");
var options = new Array( size, color);
color.name = "color";
size.name = "size";
options[0].name == "size"
>true

Upvotes: 0

antonjs
antonjs

Reputation: 14318

I would create an object like this:

var options = { 
    size: ["S", "M", "L", "XL", "XXL"],
    color: ["Red", "Blue", "Green", "White", "Black"]
};


alert(Object.keys(options));

To access the keys individualy:

for (var key in options) {
    alert(key);
}

P.S.: when you create a new array object do not use new Array use [] instead.

Upvotes: 29

Jignesh Rajput
Jignesh Rajput

Reputation: 3558

you can get using key value something like this :

var size = new Array("S", "M", "L", "XL", "XXL");
var color = new Array("Red", "Blue", "Green", "White", "Black");
var options = new Array(size, color);

var len = options.length;
for(var i = 0; i<len; i++)
{  
 for(var key in options[i])
    {
       alert(options[i][key])
    }

}

see here : http://jsfiddle.net/8hmRk/8/

Upvotes: 6

Quentin
Quentin

Reputation: 944171

You can't. The array doesn't have a name.

You just have two references to the array, one in the variable and another in the third array.

There is no way to find all the references that exist for a given object.

If the name is important, then store it with the data.

var size = { data: ["S", "M", "L", "XL", "XXL"], name: 'size' };
var color = { data: ["Red", "Blue", "Green", "White", "Black"], name: 'color' };
var options = [size, color];

Obviously you'll have to modify the existing code which accesses the data (since you now have options[0].data[0] instead of options[0][0] but you also have options[0].name).

Upvotes: 2

danp
danp

Reputation: 15261

You've made an array of arrays (multidimensional), so options[0] in this case is the size array. you need to reference the first element of the child, which for you is: options[0][0].

If you wanted to loop through all entries you can use the for .. in ... syntax which is described here.

var a = [1,2,4,5,120,12];
for (var val in t) {
    console.log(t[val]);
}

var b = ['S','M','L'];
var both = [a,b];

for (var val in both) {
     for(val2 in both[val]){console.log(both[val][val2])}
}

Upvotes: 0

Sirko
Sirko

Reputation: 74086

In that case you don't want to insert size and color inside an array, but into an object

var options = { 
    'size': size,
    'color': color
  };

Afterwards you can access the sets of keys by 

var keys = Object.keys( options );

Upvotes: 0

Tobi
Tobi

Reputation: 1438

Yes it is. You can use 

alert(options[0][0])

to get the size "S"

or

alert(options[0][1])

to get the color "Red"

Upvotes: 1

alex
alex

Reputation: 490481

There is no way to know that the two members of the options array came from variables named size and color.

They are also not necessarily called that exclusively, any variable could also point to that array.

var notSize = size;

console.log(options[0]); // It is `size` or `notSize`?

One thing you can do is use an object there instead...

var options = {
    size: size,
    color: color
}

Then you could access options.size or options.color.

Upvotes: 2

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