Related
New ES 6 (Harmony) introduces new Set object. Identity algorithm used by Set is similar to === operator and so not much suitable for comparing objects:
var set = new Set();
set.add({a:1});
set.add({a:1});
console.log([...set.values()]); // Array [ Object, Object ]
How to customize equality for Set objects in order to do deep object comparison? Is there anything like Java equals(Object)?
Update 3/2022
There is currently a proposal to add Records and Tuples (basically immutable Objects and Arrays) to Javascript. In that proposal, it offers direct comparison of Records and Tuples using === or !== where it compares values, not just object references AND relevant to this answer both Set and Map objects would use the value of the Record or Tuple in key comparisons/lookups which would solve what is being asked for here.
Since the Records and Tuples are immutable (can't be modified) and because they are easily compared by value (by their contents, not just their object reference), it allows Maps and Sets to use object contents as keys and the proposed spec explicitly names this feature for Sets and Maps.
This original question asked for customizability of a Set comparison in order to support deep object comparison. This doesn't propose customizability of the Set comparison, but it directly supports deep object comparison if you use the new Record or a Tuple instead of an Object or an Array and thus would solve the original problem here.
Note, this proposal advanced to Stage 2 in mid-2021. It has been moving forward recently, but is certainly not done.
Mozilla work on this new proposal can be tracked here.
Original Answer
The ES6 Set object does not have any compare methods or custom compare extensibility.
The .has(), .add() and .delete() methods work only off it being the same actual object or same value for a primitive and don't have a means to plug into or replace just that logic.
You could presumably derive your own object from a Set and replace .has(), .add() and .delete() methods with something that did a deep object comparison first to find if the item is already in the Set, but the performance would likely not be good since the underlying Set object would not be helping at all. You'd probably have to just do a brute force iteration through all existing objects to find a match using your own custom compare before calling the original .add().
Here's some info from this article and discussion of ES6 features:
5.2 Why can’t I configure how maps and sets compare keys and values?
Question: It would be nice if there were a way to configure what map
keys and what set elements are considered equal. Why isn’t there?
Answer: That feature has been postponed, as it is difficult to
implement properly and efficiently. One option is to hand callbacks to
collections that specify equality.
Another option, available in Java, is to specify equality via a method
that object implement (equals() in Java). However, this approach is
problematic for mutable objects: In general, if an object changes, its
“location” inside a collection has to change, as well. But that’s not
what happens in Java. JavaScript will probably go the safer route of
only enabling comparison by value for special immutable objects
(so-called value objects). Comparison by value means that two values
are considered equal if their contents are equal. Primitive values are
compared by value in JavaScript.
As mentioned in jfriend00's answer customization of equality relation is probably not possible.
Following code presents an outline of computationally efficient (but memory expensive) workaround:
class GeneralSet {
constructor() {
this.map = new Map();
this[Symbol.iterator] = this.values;
}
add(item) {
this.map.set(item.toIdString(), item);
}
values() {
return this.map.values();
}
delete(item) {
return this.map.delete(item.toIdString());
}
// ...
}
Each inserted element has to implement toIdString() method that returns string. Two objects are considered equal if and only if their toIdString methods returns same value.
As the top answer mentions, customizing equality is problematic for mutable objects. The good news is (and I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet) there's a very popular library called immutable-js that provides a rich set of immutable types which provide the deep value equality semantics you're looking for.
Here's your example using immutable-js:
const { Map, Set } = require('immutable');
var set = new Set();
set = set.add(Map({a:1}));
set = set.add(Map({a:1}));
console.log([...set.values()]); // [Map {"a" => 1}]
Maybe you can try to use JSON.stringify() to do deep object comparison.
for example :
const arr = [
{name:'a', value:10},
{name:'a', value:20},
{name:'a', value:20},
{name:'b', value:30},
{name:'b', value:40},
{name:'b', value:40}
];
const names = new Set();
const result = arr.filter(item => !names.has(JSON.stringify(item)) ? names.add(JSON.stringify(item)) : false);
console.log(result);
To add to the answers here, I went ahead and implemented a Map wrapper that takes a custom hash function, a custom equality function, and stores distinct values that have equivalent (custom) hashes in buckets.
Predictably, it turned out to be slower than czerny's string concatenation method.
Full source here: https://github.com/makoConstruct/ValueMap
Comparing them directly seems not possible, but JSON.stringify works if the keys just were sorted. As I pointed out in a comment
JSON.stringify({a:1, b:2}) !== JSON.stringify({b:2, a:1});
But we can work around that with a custom stringify method. First we write the method
Custom Stringify
Object.prototype.stringifySorted = function(){
let oldObj = this;
let obj = (oldObj.length || oldObj.length === 0) ? [] : {};
for (let key of Object.keys(this).sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b))) {
let type = typeof (oldObj[key])
if (type === 'object') {
obj[key] = oldObj[key].stringifySorted();
} else {
obj[key] = oldObj[key];
}
}
return JSON.stringify(obj);
}
The Set
Now we use a Set. But we use a Set of Strings instead of objects
let set = new Set()
set.add({a:1, b:2}.stringifySorted());
set.has({b:2, a:1}.stringifySorted());
// returns true
Get all the values
After we created the set and added the values, we can get all values by
let iterator = set.values();
let done = false;
while (!done) {
let val = iterator.next();
if (!done) {
console.log(val.value);
}
done = val.done;
}
Here's a link with all in one file
http://tpcg.io/FnJg2i
For Typescript users the answers by others (especially czerny) can be generalized to a nice type-safe and reusable base class:
/**
* Map that stringifies the key objects in order to leverage
* the javascript native Map and preserve key uniqueness.
*/
abstract class StringifyingMap<K, V> {
private map = new Map<string, V>();
private keyMap = new Map<string, K>();
has(key: K): boolean {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
return this.map.has(keyString);
}
get(key: K): V {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
return this.map.get(keyString);
}
set(key: K, value: V): StringifyingMap<K, V> {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
this.map.set(keyString, value);
this.keyMap.set(keyString, key);
return this;
}
/**
* Puts new key/value if key is absent.
* #param key key
* #param defaultValue default value factory
*/
putIfAbsent(key: K, defaultValue: () => V): boolean {
if (!this.has(key)) {
let value = defaultValue();
this.set(key, value);
return true;
}
return false;
}
keys(): IterableIterator<K> {
return this.keyMap.values();
}
keyList(): K[] {
return [...this.keys()];
}
delete(key: K): boolean {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
let flag = this.map.delete(keyString);
this.keyMap.delete(keyString);
return flag;
}
clear(): void {
this.map.clear();
this.keyMap.clear();
}
size(): number {
return this.map.size;
}
/**
* Turns the `key` object to a primitive `string` for the underlying `Map`
* #param key key to be stringified
*/
protected abstract stringifyKey(key: K): string;
}
Example implementation is then this simple: just override the stringifyKey method. In my case I stringify some uri property.
class MyMap extends StringifyingMap<MyKey, MyValue> {
protected stringifyKey(key: MyKey): string {
return key.uri.toString();
}
}
Example usage is then as if this was a regular Map<K, V>.
const key1 = new MyKey(1);
const value1 = new MyValue(1);
const value2 = new MyValue(2);
const myMap = new MyMap();
myMap.set(key1, value1);
myMap.set(key1, value2); // native Map would put another key/value pair
myMap.size(); // returns 1, not 2
A good stringification method for the special but frequent case of a TypedArray as Set/Map key is using
const key = String.fromCharCode(...new Uint16Array(myArray.buffer));
It generates the shortest possible unique string that can be easily converted back. However this is not always a valid UTF-16 string for display concerning Low and High Surrogates. Set and Map seem to ignore surrogate validity.
As measured in Firefox and Chrome, the spread operator performs slowly. If your myArray has fixed size, it executes faster when you write:
const a = new Uint16Array(myArray.buffer); // here: myArray = Uint32Array(2) = 8 bytes
const key = String.fromCharCode(a[0],a[1],a[2],a[3]); // 8 bytes too
Probably the most valuable advantage of this method of key-building: It works for Float32Array and Float64Array without any rounding side-effect. Note that +0 and -0 are then different. Infinities are same. Silent NaNs are same. Signaling NaNs are different depending on their signal (never seen in vanilla JavaScript).
As other guys said there is no native method can do it by far.
But if you would like to distinguish an array with your custom comparator, you can try to do it with the reduce method.
function distinct(array, equal) {
// No need to convert it to a Set object since it may give you a wrong signal that the set can work with your objects.
return array.reduce((p, c) => {
p.findIndex((element) => equal(element, c)) > -1 || p.push(c);
return p;
}, []);
}
// You can call this method like below,
const users = distinct(
[
{id: 1, name: "kevin"},
{id: 2, name: "sean"},
{id: 1, name: "jerry"}
],
(a, b) => a.id === b.id
);
...
As others have said, there is no way to do it with the current version of Set.
My suggestion is to do it using a combination of arrays and maps.
The code snipped below will create a map of unique keys based on your own defined key and then transform that map of unique items into an array.
const array =
[
{ "name": "Joe", "age": 17 },
{ "name": "Bob", "age": 17 },
{ "name": "Carl", "age": 35 }
]
const key = 'age';
const arrayUniqueByKey = [...new Map(array.map(item =>
[item[key], item])).values()];
console.log(arrayUniqueByKey);
/*OUTPUT
[
{ "name": "Bob", "age": 17 },
{ "name": "Carl", "age": 35 }
]
*/
// Note: this will pick the last duplicated item in the list.
To someone who found this question on Google (as me) wanting to get a value of a Map using an object as Key:
Warning: this answer will not work with all objects
var map = new Map<string,string>();
map.set(JSON.stringify({"A":2} /*string of object as key*/), "Worked");
console.log(map.get(JSON.stringify({"A":2}))||"Not worked");
Output:
Worked
New ES 6 (Harmony) introduces new Set object. Identity algorithm used by Set is similar to === operator and so not much suitable for comparing objects:
var set = new Set();
set.add({a:1});
set.add({a:1});
console.log([...set.values()]); // Array [ Object, Object ]
How to customize equality for Set objects in order to do deep object comparison? Is there anything like Java equals(Object)?
Update 3/2022
There is currently a proposal to add Records and Tuples (basically immutable Objects and Arrays) to Javascript. In that proposal, it offers direct comparison of Records and Tuples using === or !== where it compares values, not just object references AND relevant to this answer both Set and Map objects would use the value of the Record or Tuple in key comparisons/lookups which would solve what is being asked for here.
Since the Records and Tuples are immutable (can't be modified) and because they are easily compared by value (by their contents, not just their object reference), it allows Maps and Sets to use object contents as keys and the proposed spec explicitly names this feature for Sets and Maps.
This original question asked for customizability of a Set comparison in order to support deep object comparison. This doesn't propose customizability of the Set comparison, but it directly supports deep object comparison if you use the new Record or a Tuple instead of an Object or an Array and thus would solve the original problem here.
Note, this proposal advanced to Stage 2 in mid-2021. It has been moving forward recently, but is certainly not done.
Mozilla work on this new proposal can be tracked here.
Original Answer
The ES6 Set object does not have any compare methods or custom compare extensibility.
The .has(), .add() and .delete() methods work only off it being the same actual object or same value for a primitive and don't have a means to plug into or replace just that logic.
You could presumably derive your own object from a Set and replace .has(), .add() and .delete() methods with something that did a deep object comparison first to find if the item is already in the Set, but the performance would likely not be good since the underlying Set object would not be helping at all. You'd probably have to just do a brute force iteration through all existing objects to find a match using your own custom compare before calling the original .add().
Here's some info from this article and discussion of ES6 features:
5.2 Why can’t I configure how maps and sets compare keys and values?
Question: It would be nice if there were a way to configure what map
keys and what set elements are considered equal. Why isn’t there?
Answer: That feature has been postponed, as it is difficult to
implement properly and efficiently. One option is to hand callbacks to
collections that specify equality.
Another option, available in Java, is to specify equality via a method
that object implement (equals() in Java). However, this approach is
problematic for mutable objects: In general, if an object changes, its
“location” inside a collection has to change, as well. But that’s not
what happens in Java. JavaScript will probably go the safer route of
only enabling comparison by value for special immutable objects
(so-called value objects). Comparison by value means that two values
are considered equal if their contents are equal. Primitive values are
compared by value in JavaScript.
As mentioned in jfriend00's answer customization of equality relation is probably not possible.
Following code presents an outline of computationally efficient (but memory expensive) workaround:
class GeneralSet {
constructor() {
this.map = new Map();
this[Symbol.iterator] = this.values;
}
add(item) {
this.map.set(item.toIdString(), item);
}
values() {
return this.map.values();
}
delete(item) {
return this.map.delete(item.toIdString());
}
// ...
}
Each inserted element has to implement toIdString() method that returns string. Two objects are considered equal if and only if their toIdString methods returns same value.
As the top answer mentions, customizing equality is problematic for mutable objects. The good news is (and I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet) there's a very popular library called immutable-js that provides a rich set of immutable types which provide the deep value equality semantics you're looking for.
Here's your example using immutable-js:
const { Map, Set } = require('immutable');
var set = new Set();
set = set.add(Map({a:1}));
set = set.add(Map({a:1}));
console.log([...set.values()]); // [Map {"a" => 1}]
Maybe you can try to use JSON.stringify() to do deep object comparison.
for example :
const arr = [
{name:'a', value:10},
{name:'a', value:20},
{name:'a', value:20},
{name:'b', value:30},
{name:'b', value:40},
{name:'b', value:40}
];
const names = new Set();
const result = arr.filter(item => !names.has(JSON.stringify(item)) ? names.add(JSON.stringify(item)) : false);
console.log(result);
To add to the answers here, I went ahead and implemented a Map wrapper that takes a custom hash function, a custom equality function, and stores distinct values that have equivalent (custom) hashes in buckets.
Predictably, it turned out to be slower than czerny's string concatenation method.
Full source here: https://github.com/makoConstruct/ValueMap
Comparing them directly seems not possible, but JSON.stringify works if the keys just were sorted. As I pointed out in a comment
JSON.stringify({a:1, b:2}) !== JSON.stringify({b:2, a:1});
But we can work around that with a custom stringify method. First we write the method
Custom Stringify
Object.prototype.stringifySorted = function(){
let oldObj = this;
let obj = (oldObj.length || oldObj.length === 0) ? [] : {};
for (let key of Object.keys(this).sort((a, b) => a.localeCompare(b))) {
let type = typeof (oldObj[key])
if (type === 'object') {
obj[key] = oldObj[key].stringifySorted();
} else {
obj[key] = oldObj[key];
}
}
return JSON.stringify(obj);
}
The Set
Now we use a Set. But we use a Set of Strings instead of objects
let set = new Set()
set.add({a:1, b:2}.stringifySorted());
set.has({b:2, a:1}.stringifySorted());
// returns true
Get all the values
After we created the set and added the values, we can get all values by
let iterator = set.values();
let done = false;
while (!done) {
let val = iterator.next();
if (!done) {
console.log(val.value);
}
done = val.done;
}
Here's a link with all in one file
http://tpcg.io/FnJg2i
For Typescript users the answers by others (especially czerny) can be generalized to a nice type-safe and reusable base class:
/**
* Map that stringifies the key objects in order to leverage
* the javascript native Map and preserve key uniqueness.
*/
abstract class StringifyingMap<K, V> {
private map = new Map<string, V>();
private keyMap = new Map<string, K>();
has(key: K): boolean {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
return this.map.has(keyString);
}
get(key: K): V {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
return this.map.get(keyString);
}
set(key: K, value: V): StringifyingMap<K, V> {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
this.map.set(keyString, value);
this.keyMap.set(keyString, key);
return this;
}
/**
* Puts new key/value if key is absent.
* #param key key
* #param defaultValue default value factory
*/
putIfAbsent(key: K, defaultValue: () => V): boolean {
if (!this.has(key)) {
let value = defaultValue();
this.set(key, value);
return true;
}
return false;
}
keys(): IterableIterator<K> {
return this.keyMap.values();
}
keyList(): K[] {
return [...this.keys()];
}
delete(key: K): boolean {
let keyString = this.stringifyKey(key);
let flag = this.map.delete(keyString);
this.keyMap.delete(keyString);
return flag;
}
clear(): void {
this.map.clear();
this.keyMap.clear();
}
size(): number {
return this.map.size;
}
/**
* Turns the `key` object to a primitive `string` for the underlying `Map`
* #param key key to be stringified
*/
protected abstract stringifyKey(key: K): string;
}
Example implementation is then this simple: just override the stringifyKey method. In my case I stringify some uri property.
class MyMap extends StringifyingMap<MyKey, MyValue> {
protected stringifyKey(key: MyKey): string {
return key.uri.toString();
}
}
Example usage is then as if this was a regular Map<K, V>.
const key1 = new MyKey(1);
const value1 = new MyValue(1);
const value2 = new MyValue(2);
const myMap = new MyMap();
myMap.set(key1, value1);
myMap.set(key1, value2); // native Map would put another key/value pair
myMap.size(); // returns 1, not 2
A good stringification method for the special but frequent case of a TypedArray as Set/Map key is using
const key = String.fromCharCode(...new Uint16Array(myArray.buffer));
It generates the shortest possible unique string that can be easily converted back. However this is not always a valid UTF-16 string for display concerning Low and High Surrogates. Set and Map seem to ignore surrogate validity.
As measured in Firefox and Chrome, the spread operator performs slowly. If your myArray has fixed size, it executes faster when you write:
const a = new Uint16Array(myArray.buffer); // here: myArray = Uint32Array(2) = 8 bytes
const key = String.fromCharCode(a[0],a[1],a[2],a[3]); // 8 bytes too
Probably the most valuable advantage of this method of key-building: It works for Float32Array and Float64Array without any rounding side-effect. Note that +0 and -0 are then different. Infinities are same. Silent NaNs are same. Signaling NaNs are different depending on their signal (never seen in vanilla JavaScript).
As other guys said there is no native method can do it by far.
But if you would like to distinguish an array with your custom comparator, you can try to do it with the reduce method.
function distinct(array, equal) {
// No need to convert it to a Set object since it may give you a wrong signal that the set can work with your objects.
return array.reduce((p, c) => {
p.findIndex((element) => equal(element, c)) > -1 || p.push(c);
return p;
}, []);
}
// You can call this method like below,
const users = distinct(
[
{id: 1, name: "kevin"},
{id: 2, name: "sean"},
{id: 1, name: "jerry"}
],
(a, b) => a.id === b.id
);
...
As others have said, there is no way to do it with the current version of Set.
My suggestion is to do it using a combination of arrays and maps.
The code snipped below will create a map of unique keys based on your own defined key and then transform that map of unique items into an array.
const array =
[
{ "name": "Joe", "age": 17 },
{ "name": "Bob", "age": 17 },
{ "name": "Carl", "age": 35 }
]
const key = 'age';
const arrayUniqueByKey = [...new Map(array.map(item =>
[item[key], item])).values()];
console.log(arrayUniqueByKey);
/*OUTPUT
[
{ "name": "Bob", "age": 17 },
{ "name": "Carl", "age": 35 }
]
*/
// Note: this will pick the last duplicated item in the list.
To someone who found this question on Google (as me) wanting to get a value of a Map using an object as Key:
Warning: this answer will not work with all objects
var map = new Map<string,string>();
map.set(JSON.stringify({"A":2} /*string of object as key*/), "Worked");
console.log(map.get(JSON.stringify({"A":2}))||"Not worked");
Output:
Worked
Suppose that I have this code:
var cfg = {
config: {
fields: {
name: {
type: 'text'
},
age: {
type: 'number'
}
},
actions: [
{
label: 'Print',
cb: (model) => {
console.log(model);
}
}
]
},
data: {name: 'Jhon', age: 23}
}
And I want to convert it to a string (to let a user edit it) and then convert it back to executable code, any idea in how to achieve this?
I tried with JSON.stringify and JSON.parse but that will of course strip the functions. .toString returns "[object Object]", iterating on the object and call .toString when the values is a string, function or number is a possibility, any other idea?
The Function constructor takes code as string, so does eval and a couple other. However, if in any way avoidable, do not convert code to string and backwards because of security concerns, ability to debug and a lot of other issues you can run into when doing so.
Converting code to a string is slightly annoying, because you need to make sure you don't redeclare variables and everything in the new context is syntactically correct, e.g. note that obj's f property is again named in the declaration, because it is later given to eval which places it in the global scope where it needs a name.
let obj = { f: function f() { let stuff = "hi"; console.log("hi"); } };
let code = obj.f.toString();
console.log(code);
eval(code);
f();
Note that JSON.stringify has an optional replacer parameter which can be used to customize the process.
I will again highly advise to avoid any code to/from string conversions when possible, in all normal cases this is not needed and should not be done.
You can iterate around that object and set it to inputs elements, like this
for (var key in cfg.config.fields) {
console.log(key, cfg.config.fields[key].type);
console.log(key, cfg.data[key],'data');
console.log('<input type="'+cfg.config.fields[key].type+'" value="'+cfg.data[key]+'">')
}
This is the solution I came up with:
const toString = (code) => {
if(Array.isArray(code)){
return code.map(item => toString(item));
}
else if(typeof code == 'object'){
let tmp = {};
Object.keys(code).forEach(key => {
tmp[key] = toString(code[key])
});
return tmp;
}
else{
return code.toString().split('\n').join('').replace(/ +(?= )/gmi, '');
}
};
This will iterate recursively across all the properties in a random JS structure (an object containing objects and arrays) an return the corresponding structure containing strings, you can then use JSON.stringify to get the actual string.
After the user edited it, it is executed with:
eval(`(${string})`);
As noted by other, be careful using eval, it can be dangerous (an interesting article is https://www.nczonline.net/blog/2013/06/25/eval-isnt-evil-just-misunderstood/)
I am learning functional programming in Javascript and using Ramda. I have this object
var fieldvalues = { name: "hello there", mobile: "1234",
meta: {status: "new"},
comments: [ {user: "john", comment: "hi"},
{user:"ram", comment: "hello"}]
};
to be converted like this:
{
comments.0.comment: "hi",
comments.0.user: "john",
comments.1.comment: "hello",
comments.1.user: "ram",
meta.status: "new",
mobile: "1234",
name: "hello there"
}
I have tried this Ramda source, which works.
var _toDotted = function(acc, obj) {
var key = obj[0], val = obj[1];
if(typeof(val) != "object") { // Matching name, mobile etc
acc[key] = val;
return acc;
}
if(!Array.isArray(val)) { // Matching meta
for(var k in val)
acc[key + "." + k] = val[k];
return acc;
}
// Matching comments
for(var idx in val) {
for(var k2 in val[idx]) {
acc[key + "." + idx + "." + k2] = val[idx][k2];
}
}
return acc;
};
// var toDotted = R.pipe(R.toPairs, R.reduce(_toDotted, {}));
var toDotted = R.pipe(R.toPairs, R.curry( function(obj) {
return R.reduce(_toDotted, {}, obj);
}));
console.log(toDotted(fieldvalues));
However, I am not sure if this is close to Functional programming methods. It just seems to be wrapped around some functional code.
Any ideas or pointers, where I can make this more functional way of writing this code.
The code snippet available here.
UPDATE 1
Updated the code to solve a problem, where the old data was getting tagged along.
Thanks
A functional approach would
use recursion to deal with arbitrarily shaped data
use multiple tiny functions as building blocks
use pattern matching on the data to choose the computation on a case-by-case basis
Whether you pass through a mutable object as an accumulator (for performance) or copy properties around (for purity) doesn't really matter, as long as the end result (on your public API) is immutable. Actually there's a nice third way that you already used: association lists (key-value pairs), which will simplify dealing with the object structure in Ramda.
const primitive = (keys, val) => [R.pair(keys.join("."), val)];
const array = (keys, arr) => R.addIndex(R.chain)((v, i) => dot(R.append(keys, i), v), arr);
const object = (keys, obj) => R.chain(([v, k]) => dot(R.append(keys, k), v), R.toPairs(obj));
const dot = (keys, val) =>
(Object(val) !== val
? primitive
: Array.isArray(val)
? array
: object
)(keys, val);
const toDotted = x => R.fromPairs(dot([], x))
Alternatively to concatenating the keys and passing them as arguments, you can also map R.prepend(key) over the result of each dot call.
Your solution is hard-coded to have inherent knowledge of the data structure (the nested for loops). A better solution would know nothing about the input data and still give you the expected result.
Either way, this is a pretty weird problem, but I was particularly bored so I figured I'd give it a shot. I mostly find this a completely pointless exercise because I cannot picture a scenario where the expected output could ever be better than the input.
This isn't a Rambda solution because there's no reason for it to be. You should understand the solution as a simple recursive procedure. If you can understand it, converting it to a sugary Rambda solution is trivial.
// determine if input is object
const isObject = x=> Object(x) === x
// flatten object
const oflatten = (data) => {
let loop = (namespace, acc, data) => {
if (Array.isArray(data))
data.forEach((v,k)=>
loop(namespace.concat([k]), acc, v))
else if (isObject(data))
Object.keys(data).forEach(k=>
loop(namespace.concat([k]), acc, data[k]))
else
Object.assign(acc, {[namespace.join('.')]: data})
return acc
}
return loop([], {}, data)
}
// example data
var fieldvalues = {
name: "hello there",
mobile: "1234",
meta: {status: "new"},
comments: [
{user: "john", comment: "hi"},
{user: "ram", comment: "hello"}
]
}
// show me the money ...
console.log(oflatten(fieldvalues))
Total function
oflatten is reasonably robust and will work on any input. Even when the input is an array, a primitive value, or undefined. You can be certain you will always get an object as output.
// array input example
console.log(oflatten(['a', 'b', 'c']))
// {
// "0": "a",
// "1": "b",
// "2": "c"
// }
// primitive value example
console.log(oflatten(5))
// {
// "": 5
// }
// undefined example
console.log(oflatten())
// {
// "": undefined
// }
How it works …
It takes an input of any kind, then …
It starts the loop with two state variables: namespace and acc . acc is your return value and is always initialized with an empty object {}. And namespace keeps track of the nesting keys and is always initialized with an empty array, []
notice I don't use a String to namespace the key because a root namespace of '' prepended to any key will always be .somekey. That is not the case when you use a root namespace of [].
Using the same example, [].concat(['somekey']).join('.') will give you the proper key, 'somekey'.
Similarly, ['meta'].concat(['status']).join('.') will give you 'meta.status'. See? Using an array for the key computation will make this a lot easier.
The loop has a third parameter, data, the current value we are processing. The first loop iteration will always be the original input
We do a simple case analysis on data's type. This is necessary because JavaScript doesn't have pattern matching. Just because were using a if/else doesn't mean it's not functional paradigm.
If data is an Array, we want to iterate through the array, and recursively call loop on each of the child values. We pass along the value's key as namespace.concat([k]) which will become the new namespace for the nested call. Notice, that nothing gets assigned to acc at this point. We only want to assign to acc when we have reached a value and until then, we're just building up the namespace.
If the data is an Object, we iterate through it just like we did with an Array. There's a separate case analysis for this because the looping syntax for objects is slightly different than arrays. Otherwise, it's doing the exact same thing.
If the data is neither an Array or an Object, we've reached a value. At this point we can assign the data value to the acc using the built up namespace as the key. Because we're done building the namespace for this key, all we have to do compute the final key is namespace.join('.') and everything works out.
The resulting object will always have as many pairs as values that were found in the original object.
I get from the server a list of objects
[{name:'test01', age:10},{name:'test02', age:20},{name:'test03', age:30}]
I load them into html controls for the user to edit.
Then there is a button to bulk save the entire list back to the database.
Instead of sending the whole list I only want to send the subset of objects that were changed.
It can be any number of items in the array. I want to do something similar to frameworks like Angular that mark an object property like "pristine" when no change has been done to it. Then use that flag to only post to the server the items that are not "pristine", the ones that were modified.
Here is a function down below that will return an array/object of changed objects when supplied with an old array/object of objects and a new array of objects:
// intended to compare objects of identical shape; ideally static.
//
// any top-level key with a primitive value which exists in `previous` but not
// in `current` returns `undefined` while vice versa yields a diff.
//
// in general, the input type determines the output type. that is if `previous`
// and `current` are objects then an object is returned. if arrays then an array
// is returned, etc.
const getChanges = (previous, current) => {
if (isPrimitive(previous) && isPrimitive(current)) {
if (previous === current) {
return "";
}
return current;
}
if (isObject(previous) && isObject(current)) {
const diff = getChanges(Object.entries(previous), Object.entries(current));
return diff.reduce((merged, [key, value]) => {
return {
...merged,
[key]: value
}
}, {});
}
const changes = [];
if (JSON.stringify(previous) === JSON.stringify(current)) {
return changes;
}
for (let i = 0; i < current.length; i++) {
const item = current[i];
if (JSON.stringify(item) !== JSON.stringify(previous[i])) {
changes.push(item);
}
}
return changes;
};
For Example:
const arr1 = [1, 2, 3, 4]
const arr2 = [4, 4, 2, 4]
console.log(getChanges(arr1, arr2)) // [4,4,2]
const obj1 = {
foo: "bar",
baz: [
1, 2, 3
],
qux: {
hello: "world"
},
bingo: "name-o",
}
const obj2 = {
foo: "barx",
baz: [
1, 2, 3, 4
],
qux: {
hello: null
},
bingo: "name-o",
}
console.log(getChanges(obj1.foo, obj2.foo)) // barx
console.log(getChanges(obj1.bingo, obj2.bingo)) // ""
console.log(getChanges(obj1.baz, obj2.baz)) // [4]
console.log(getChanges(obj1, obj2)) // {foo:'barx',baz:[1,2,3,4],qux:{hello:null}}
const obj3 = [{ name: 'test01', age: 10 }, { name: 'test02', age: 20 }, { name: 'test03', age: 30 }]
const obj4 = [{ name: 'test01', age: 10 }, { name: 'test02', age: 20 }, { name: 'test03', age: 20 }]
console.log(getChanges(obj3, obj4)) // [{name:'test03', age:20}]
Utility functions used:
// not required for this example but aid readability of the main function
const typeOf = o => Object.prototype.toString.call(o);
const isObject = o => o !== null && !Array.isArray(o) && typeOf(o).split(" ")[1].slice(0, -1) === "Object";
const isPrimitive = o => {
switch (typeof o) {
case "object": {
return false;
}
case "function": {
return false;
}
default: {
return true;
}
}
};
You would simply have to export the full list of edited values client side, compare it with the old list, and then send the list of changes off to the server.
Hope this helps!
Here are a few ideas.
Use a framework. You spoke of Angular.
Use Proxies, though Internet Explorer has no support for it.
Instead of using classic properties, maybe use Object.defineProperty's set/get to achieve some kind of change tracking.
Use getter/setting functions to store data instead of properties: getName() and setName() for example. Though this the older way of doing what defineProperty now does.
Whenever you bind your data to your form elements, set a special property that indicates if the property has changed. Something like __hasChanged. Set to true if any property on the object changes.
The old school bruteforce way: keep your original list of data that came from the server, deep copy it into another list, bind your form controls to the new list, then when the user clicks submit, compare the objects in the original list to the objects in the new list, plucking out the changed ones as you go. Probably the easiest, but not necessarily the cleanest.
A different take on #6: Attach a special property to each object that always returns the original version of the object:
var myData = [{name: "Larry", age: 47}];
var dataWithCopyOfSelf = myData.map(function(data) {
Object.assign({}, data, { original: data });
});
// now bind your form to dataWithCopyOfSelf.
Of course, this solution assumes a few things: (1) that your objects are flat and simple since Object.assign() doesn't deep copy, (2) that your original data set will never be changed, and (3) that nothing ever touches the contents of original.
There are a multitude of solutions out there.
With ES6 we can use Proxy
to accomplish this task: intercept an Object write, and mark it as dirty.
Proxy allows to create a handler Object that can trap, manipulate, and than forward changes to the original target Object, basically allowing to reconfigure its behavior.
The trap we're going to adopt to intercept Object writes is the handler set().
At this point we can add a non-enumerable property flag like i.e: _isDirty using Object.defineProperty() to mark our Object as modified, dirty.
When using traps (in our case the handler's set()) no changes are applied nor reflected to the Objects, therefore we need to forward the argument values to the target Object using Reflect.set().
Finally, to retrieve the modified objects, filter() the Array with our proxy Objects in search of those having its own Property "_isDirty".
// From server:
const dataOrg = [
{id:1, name:'a', age:10},
{id:2, name:'b', age:20},
{id:3, name:'c', age:30}
];
// Mirror data from server to observable Proxies:
const data = dataOrg.map(ob => new Proxy(ob, {
set() {
Object.defineProperty(ob, "_isDirty", {value: true}); // Flag
return Reflect.set(...arguments); // Forward trapped args to ob
}
}));
// From now on, use proxied data. Let's change some values:
data[0].name = "Lorem";
data[0].age = 42;
data[2].age = 31;
// Collect modified data
const dataMod = data.filter(ob => ob.hasOwnProperty("_isDirty"));
// Test what we're about to send back to server:
console.log(JSON.stringify(dataMod, null, 2));
Without using .defineProperty()
If for some reason you don't feel comfortable into tapping into the original object adding extra properties as flags, you could instead populate immediately
the dataMod (array with modified Objects) with references:
const dataOrg = [
{id:1, name:'a', age:10},
{id:2, name:'b', age:20},
{id:3, name:'c', age:30}
];
// Prepare array to hold references to the modified Objects
const dataMod = [];
const data = dataOrg.map(ob => new Proxy(ob, {
set() {
if (dataMod.indexOf(ob) < 0) dataMod.push(ob); // Push reference
return Reflect.set(...arguments);
}
}));
data[0].name = "Lorem";
data[0].age = 42;
data[2].age = 31;
console.log(JSON.stringify(dataMod, null, 2));
Can I Use - Proxy (IE)
Proxy - handler.set()
Global Objects - Reflect
Reflect.set()
Object.defineProperty()
Object.hasOwnProperty()
Without having to get fancy with prototype properties you could simply store them in another array whenever your form control element detects a change
Something along the lines of:
var modified = [];
data.forEach(function(item){
var domNode = // whatever you use to match data to form control element
domNode.addEventListener('input',function(){
if(modified.indexOf(item) === -1){
modified.push(item);
}
});
});
Then send the modified array to server when it's time to save
Why not use Ember.js observable properties ? You can use the Ember.observer function to get and set changes in your data.
Ember.Object.extend({
valueObserver: Ember.observer('value', function(sender, key, value, rev) {
// Executes whenever the "value" property changes
// See the addObserver method for more information about the callback arguments
})
});
The Ember.object actually does a lot of heavy lifting for you.
Once you define your object, add an observer like so:
object.addObserver('propertyKey', targetObject, targetAction)
My idea is to sort object keys and convert object to be string to compare:
// use this function to sort keys, and save key=>value in an array
function objectSerilize(obj) {
let keys = Object.keys(obj)
let results = []
keys.sort((a, b) => a > b ? -1 : a < b ? 1 : 0)
keys.forEach(key => {
let value = obj[key]
if (typeof value === 'object') {
value = objectSerilize(value)
}
results.push({
key,
value,
})
})
return results
}
// use this function to compare
function compareObject(a, b) {
let aStr = JSON.stringify(objectSerilize(a))
let bStr = JSON.stringify(objectSerilize(b))
return aStr === bStr
}
This is what I think up.
It would be cleanest, I’d think to have the object emit an event when a property is added or removed or modified.
A simplistic implementation could involve an array with the object keys; whenever a setter or heck the constructor returns this, it first calls a static function returning a promise; resolving: map with changed values in the array: things added, things removed, or neither. So one could get(‘changed’) or so forth; returning an array.
Similarly every setter can emit an event with arguments for initial value and new value.
Assuming classes are used, you could easily have a static method in a parent generic class that can be called through its constructor and so really you could simplify most of this by passing the object either to itself, or to the parent through super(checkMeProperty).