Develop Reference

Data masking in MongoDB

We have a MongoDB database in a development environment. There are a lot of collections that contain names of people. What we want to do is the following:
mask the names in each collection, the fields need to be updated directly in the database, cannot run them through some external pipeline
once masked, it is ok if we are unable to retrieve the original names (so one-way masking)
every unique name should result in the same mask
the masking script can be run on the mongodb cli or a MongoDB gui like Studio3T
I was thinking of maybe using MD5 or SHA, but I am not sure if either is available to use directly in mongo operations like update or even in javascript without external libraries.
Also, since MD5 always produces the same hash, if someone were to get access to the document, since we will not be masking the field name, it would be fairly easy to feed typical names into the algorithm until the hash matches to figure out the name, but I think we may be able to live with this.
An alternative I was thinking of was, to loop through the unique names we have, and create a map from names to UUIDs. Then, go through each collection and use this map to update the names with the UUIDs. The problem with this is that we'll need to keep this mapping dictionary for when we receive additional documents for an existing person.

Implement repeating behaviors with numerous amount but same html elements

Let's say we have a group of HTML element like this JS fiddle with certain behaviors. Having one of this is easy on a HTML page.
But what is the best practice of having 1000 of them (the same JS fiddle) on a page? This is not only about dynamically generating required HTML elements but more importantly generating the behaviors/JS codes for each individual element (with different values and id).
An Example:
document.getElementById("ID1").onchange = function () {
//some complicated behaviors
};
Generate the a ID2/ID3/ID4...ID1000 version of the above codes in run time when needed. Note that it must be running on HTML environment with no servers. Select options/data are stored in the same html file (as an array or some sort).
Any advice or suggestions are appreciated.

Ideally, rather than loading up all the possible options in the DOM, you would use AJAX to fetch the next set of options from the server. So when you select the state, it goes and grabs the counties for that state, then when you select the county, it goes and grabs the cities for that state.
To go further, when you select the state, it sends the selected state back to the server to fetch all the counties for that state. Then when you select the county, it sends that back to the server so it can fetch the cities.
You can use the server side language of your choice of course (PHP, ASP.net, Ruby, Python, etc.)
Otherwise, you're injecting a ton of data in to your DOM that will never get used and that would vastly increase load times; whereas AJAX is generally pretty fast.
There are lots of tutorials regarding the use of AJAX so I'm not going to cover that in the answer, but that is your best solution.

You tagged the questions only with Javascript so I assume that you have the data locally and you don't retrieve it from a server.If you take the data from the server use Ajax and get only the data that you need at that moment.
With Javascript you can use
document.createElement('element'); // this is faster than Jquery if you generate a lot of data
with Jquery you can use
$(document.createElement('element'))

Is it possible to send localStorage data, and then retrieve it again? AJAX?

My scenario is this: I have a very small array in my js file. When the page loads up, I have a function that loops through the array, and generates an li element for each item in the array, displaying it's name and price in the li. The array is constructed like this:
var gameList = [
{ name: "", value: 0.00},
]
Secondly, I have a simple form on the page that allows me to add new items to the array, and using localStorage, it's possible for me to keep a dynamically updated array. I push new items into the array (gameList), then at the end of the session I set it using localStorage.
localStorage.setItem("updatedGameList", JSON.stringify(gameList));
I have a couple of lines at the start of my code that sets my original array 'gameList' to be equal to the locally stored, updated game list.
var retrievedData = localStorage.getItem("updatedGameList");
gameList = JSON.parse(retrievedData);
So this is fine for now, but the growing array - which I want to keep and maintain - is only available in this browser, on this machine.
So, my question is, can I send this locally stored data somewhere? Maybe my personal domain? (Which is where I will host the app when it's finished) That way I could then reference it properly in my js file so that the data is always available? Maybe the array could have it's own js file?
I realise that this may not be the best way to be handling what is essentially a database. But I'm only part way through an online course and I'm using the tools that I have to make this work.
And lastly, in terms of maintenance of the array, is there any way to send it back to sublime in the form a .js file? I know this could be a crazy question. The updated array will become pretty big, maybe 200 items eventually, and it would be much easier to maintain from within sublime.
Thanks for your time, and apologies if part of this request is ridiculous!! :)
I have just been reading about AJAX, and thought maybe there's a way to send the updated array as a json file to somewhere(!) on my website, and then request that same file at the start of each new session, so I'm always working with, and saving, the latest updated array.
Thanks for reading, and hopefully you have some answers! :)

Although not quite what I was looking for - essentially some way of automatically getting the new array, sending it somewhere more secure than local storage, then referencing the new array to give me the most up to date starting point each time (and all with just javascript) - the 'dirty' way suggested below turned out to be sufficient for now until I start using databases.
From Kirupa, over at the forums:
Not a ridiculous question at all! You can send your own data anywhere you want, but it will require some level of server-related code. The easiest way to send data back and forth is through JSON, and you can convert your array into a JSON format easily using something like the following:
var jsonData = JSON.stringify(myArray);
From here, you can send this data to a database, to another web site, or to your e-mail server. If you want something really quick and dirty, you can literally just copy the contents of your JSON-ized array using the Chrome Dev Tools, save it on disk as a .js file, and reference it again in your app. That is a manual way of doing something that you don't really care about automating.
The best solution is to store this in a database. They've gotten easier to deal with as well. Firebase is my go-to for things like this, and this video might give you some ideas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAsvwy1-oxE

Run Database Stored RegEx against DOM

I have a question about how to approach a certain scenario before I get halfway through it and figure out it was not the best option.
I work for a large company that has a team that creates tools for the team mates to use that aren’t official enterprise tools. We have no access to the database directly, just access to an internal server to store our files to run and be able to access the main site with javascript etc (same domain).
What I am working on is a tool that has a ton of options in it that allow you to select that I will call “data points” on a page.
There are things like “Account status, Balance, Name, Phone number, email etc” and have it save those to an excel sheet.
So you input account numbers, choose what you need and then using IE Objects it navigates to the page and scrapes data you request.
My question is as follows..
I want to make the scraping part pretty Dynamic in the way it works. I want to be able to add new datapoints on the fly.
My goal or idea is so store the regular expression needed to get the specific piece of data in the table with the “data point option”.
If I choose “Name” it knows the expression for name in the database to run again the DOM.
What would be the best way about creating that type of function in Javascript / Jquery?
I need to pass a Regex to a function, have it run against the DOM and then return the result.
I have a feeling that there will be things that require more than 1 step to get the information etc.
I am just trying to think of the best way to approach it without having to hardcode 200+ expressions into the file as the page may get updated and need to be changed.
Any ideas?

IRobotSoft scraper may be the tool you are looking for. Check this forum and see if questions are similar to what you are doing: http://irobotsoft.org/bb/YaBB.pl?board=newcomer. It is free.
What it uses is not regular expression but a language called HTQL, which may be more suitable for extracting web pages. It also supports regular expression, but not as the main language.
It organizes all your actions well with a visual interface, so you can dynamically compose actions or tasks for changing needs.

Executing self-contained javascript from.... javascript

I have javascript that is being generated at design time that needs to be executed to find a value at run time. The code is stored as a string in an object and I would like to be able to execute it and retrieve the value and then scrap the code. Is there a way to do this? Do I have to use eval()?

You can use eval(String)
Or use new Function (String)
Or use document.createElement
[edited]
Depend on how it was done your code
1 -
if those strings are saved in shared across different pages (with cookies or database), then SERVER-SIDE you can generate a tag <script> with the values ​​saved in a JSON for quick access.
2 -
If the strings are saved only at runtime (ie in pagination are not recoverable values) you may not need to save these values ​​in Strings, talves you can create a global Json in Window Object (eg. window.MyObjectGlobal), making the values ​​accessible at any time on the page (since there is no paging) - is idea can also be reused in case of using the SERVER-SIDE, combined with Ajax (ajax only to save the data in your database), or document.cookie (but will have to use document.createElement("script") or eval)
Good luck

Yes, you can do that using eval.
However, remember evalis evil and it could potentially introduce security risks.
Anyway, if you know what you're doing, that's the way to go