How do you determine equality for two JavaScript objects?

Why reinvent the wheel? Give underscore.js a try. It has a number of must-have functions such as isEqual().

http://lodash.com/docs#isEqual

_.isEqual(object, other);

It will brute force check each key value - just like the other examples on this page - using es5 and native optimizations if they're available in the browser.

Note: Previously this answer recommended underscore, but lodash has done a better job of getting bugs fixed and addressing issues with consistency.

The default equality operator in JavaScript for Objects yields true when they refer to the same location in memory.

var x = {};
var y = {};
var z = x;

x === y; // => false
x === z; // => true

If you require a different equality operator you'll need to add an equals(other) method, or something like it to your classes and the specifics of your problem domain will determine what exactly that means.

Here's a playing card example:

function Card(rank, suit) {
  this.rank = rank;
  this.suit = suit;
  this.equals = function(other) {
     return other.rank == this.rank && other.suit == this.suit;
  };
}

var queenOfClubs = new Card(12, "C");
var kingOfSpades = new Card(13, "S");

queenOfClubs.equals(kingOfSpades); // => false
kingOfSpades.equals(new Card(13, "S")); // => true

If you are using a JSON library, you can encode each object as JSON, then compare the resulting strings for equality.

var obj1={test:"value"};
var obj2={test:"value2"};

alert(JSON.encode(obj1)===JSON.encode(obj2));

Are you trying to test if two objects are the equal? ie: their properties are equal?

If this is the case, you'll probably have noticed this situation:

var a = { foo : "bar" };
var b = { foo : "bar" };
alert (a == b ? "Equal" : "Not equal");
// "Not equal"

you might have to do something like this:

function objectEquals(obj1, obj2) {
    for (var i in obj1) {
        if (obj1.hasOwnProperty(i)) {
            if (!obj2.hasOwnProperty(i)) return false;
            if (obj1[i] != obj2[i]) return false;
        }
    }
    for (var i in obj2) {
        if (obj2.hasOwnProperty(i)) {
            if (!obj1.hasOwnProperty(i)) return false;
            if (obj1[i] != obj2[i]) return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

Obviously that function could do with quite a bit of optimisation, and the ability to do deep checking (to handle nested objects: var a = { foo : { fu : "bar" } }) but you get the idea.

As FOR pointed out, you might have to adapt this for your own purposes, eg: different classes may have different definitions of "equal". If you're just working with plain objects, the above may suffice, otherwise a custom MyClass.equals() function may be the way to go.

If you have a deep copy function handy, you can use the following trick to still use JSON.stringify while matching the order of properties:

function equals(obj1, obj2) {
    function _equals(obj1, obj2) {
        return JSON.stringify(obj1)
            === JSON.stringify($.extend(true, {}, obj1, obj2));
    }
    return _equals(obj1, obj2) && _equals(obj2, obj1);
}

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/CU3vb/3/

Rationale:

Since the properties of obj1 are copied to the clone one by one, their order in the clone will be preserved. And when the properties of obj2 are copied to the clone, since properties already existing in obj1 will simply be overwritten, their orders in the clone will be preserved.

I'd advise against hashing or serialization (as the JSON solution suggest). If you need to test if two objects are equal, then you need to define what equals means. It could be that all data members in both objects match, or it could be that must the memory locations match (meaning both variables reference the same object in memory), or may be that only one data member in each object must match.

Recently I developed an object whose constructor creates a new id (starting from 1 and incrementing by 1) each time an instance is created. This object has an isEqual function that compares that id value with the id value of another object and returns true if they match.

In that case I defined "equal" as meaning the the id values match. Given that each instance has a unique id this could be used to enforce the idea that matching objects also occupy the same memory location. Although that is not necessary.

Needing a more generic object comparison function than had been posted, I cooked up the following. Critique appreciated...

Object.prototype.equals = function(iObj) {
  if (this.constructor !== iObj.constructor)
    return false;
  var aMemberCount = 0;
  for (var a in this) {
    if (!this.hasOwnProperty(a))
      continue;
    if (typeof this[a] === 'object' && typeof iObj[a] === 'object' ? !this[a].equals(iObj[a]) : this[a] !== iObj[a])
      return false;
    ++aMemberCount;
  }
  for (var a in iObj)
    if (iObj.hasOwnProperty(a))
      --aMemberCount;
  return aMemberCount ? false : true;
}

I need to mock jQuery POST requests, so the equality that matters to me is that both objects have the same set of properties (none missing in either object), and that each property value is "equal" (according to this definition). I don't care about the objects having mismatching methods.

Here's what I'll be using, it should be good enough for my specific requirements:

function PostRequest() {
    for (var i = 0; i < arguments.length; i += 2) {
        this[arguments[i]] = arguments[i+1];
    }

    var compare = function(u, v) {
        if (typeof(u) != typeof(v)) {
            return false;
        }

        var allkeys = {};
        for (var i in u) {
            allkeys[i] = 1;
        }
        for (var i in v) {
            allkeys[i] = 1;
        }
        for (var i in allkeys) {
            if (u.hasOwnProperty(i) != v.hasOwnProperty(i)) {
                if ((u.hasOwnProperty(i) && typeof(u[i]) == 'function') ||
                    (v.hasOwnProperty(i) && typeof(v[i]) == 'function')) {
                    continue;
                } else {
                    return false;
                }
            }
            if (typeof(u[i]) != typeof(v[i])) {
                return false;
            }
            if (typeof(u[i]) == 'object') {
                if (!compare(u[i], v[i])) {
                    return false;
                }
            } else {
                if (u[i] !== v[i]) {
                    return false;
                }
            }
        }

        return true;
    };

    this.equals = function(o) {
        return compare(this, o);
    };

    return this;
}

Use like so:

foo = new PostRequest('text', 'hello', 'html', '<p>hello</p>');
foo.equals({ html: '<p>hello</p>', text: 'hello' });

It's useful to consider two objects equal if they have all the same values for all properties and recursively for all nested objects and arrays. I also consider the following two objects equal:

var a = {p1: 1};
var b = {p1: 1, p2: undefined};

Similarly, arrays can have "missing" elements and undefined elements. I would treat those the same as well:

var c = [1, 2];
var d = [1, 2, undefined];

A function that implements this definition of equality:

function isEqual(a, b) {
    if (a === b) {
        return true;
    }

    if (generalType(a) != generalType(b)) {
        return false;
    }

    if (a == b) {
        return true;
    }

    if (typeof a != 'object') {
        return false;
    }

    // null != {}
    if (a instanceof Object != b instanceof Object) {
        return false;
    }

    if (a instanceof Date || b instanceof Date) {
        if (a instanceof Date != b instanceof Date ||
            a.getTime() != b.getTime()) {
            return false;
        }
    }

    var allKeys = [].concat(keys(a), keys(b));
    uniqueArray(allKeys);

    for (var i = 0; i < allKeys.length; i++) {
        var prop = allKeys[i];
        if (!isEqual(a[prop], b[prop])) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

Source code (including the helper functions, generalType and uniqueArray): Unit Test and Test Runner here.

Depends on what you mean by equality. And therefore it is up to you, as the developer of the classes, to define their equality.

There's one case used sometimes, where two instances are considered 'equal' if they point to the same location in memory, but that is not always what you want. For instance, if I have a Person class, I might want to consider two Person objects 'equal' if they have the same Last Name, First Name, and Social Security Number (even if they point to different locations in memory).

On the other hand, we can't simply say that two objects are equal if the value of each of their members is the same, since, sometimes, you don't want that. In other words, for each class, it's up to the class developer to define what members make up the objects 'identity' and develop a proper equality operator (be it via overloading the == operator or an Equals method).

Saying that two objects are equal if they have the same hash is one way out. However you then have to wonder how the hash is calculated for each instance. Going back to the Person example above, we could use this system if the hash was calculated by looking at the values of the First Name, Last Name, and Social Security Number fields. On top of that, we are then relying on the quality of the hashing method (that's a huge topic on its own, but suffice it to say that not all hashes are created equal, and bad hashing methods can lead to more collisions, which in this case would return false matches).

I've written a small library that runs on Node.js and the browser called compare.js. It offers the usual comparison operators, such as ==, !=, >, >=, <, <= and identity on all data types of JavaScript.

E.g., you can use

cmp.eq(obj1, obj2);

and this will check for equality (using a deep-equal approach). Otherwise, if you do

cmp.id(obj1, obj2);

it will compare by reference, hence check for identity. You can also use < and > on objects, which mean subset and superset.

compare.js is covered by nearly 700 unit tests, hence it should hopefully not have too many bugs ;-).

You can find it on https://github.com/goloroden/compare.js for free, it is open-sourced under the MIT license.

A quick "hack" to tell if two objects are similar, is to use their toString() methods. If you're checking objects A and B, make sure A and B have meaningful toString() methods and check that the strings they return are the same.

This isn't a panacea, but it can be useful sometimes in the right situations.