Identify an array of objects by object property

Question

My question:

I have an array of objects as such

var people = [
        {name: 'Dan'  ,  age: '20', favoriteColor : 'blue'}, 
        {name: 'Bob'  ,  age: '35', favoriteColor : 'red' }, 
        {name: 'Frank',  age: '22', favoriteColor : 'green'}, 
        {name: 'Ed'   ,  age: '27', favoriteColor : 'yellow'}
]

I need to be able to identify the objects in the array by their name property. [It's important to note that the name property for each object in the array WILL be unique]. However, they are not ordered by any particular pattern. So people[0] may or may not equal the object with a 'name' of 'Dan'.

I want to be able to access the data by organizing it so that

people.Dan 

returns the object

{age: '20', favoriteColor: 'blue'}

I feel like this should be relatively simple, but I don't really know the words to describe the issue to be able to find the proper solution.

EDIT: For anyone reading this in the future, I decided to go with Elliot's solution instead of using underscore.js. They both solve the problem, but it ended up being easier just to implement another function.

Answer 1

Right now people is an array. You need to restructure it into an object, where each name is a property returning the rest of that object. Here's one way to do that:

var tempPeople = {};
for(var i = 0, len = people.length; i<len; i++) {
    tempPeople[people[i].name] = people[i];
}

people = tempPeople;

You could also leave people as an array and instead use Array.filter to select by name:

var dan = people.filter(function(person) { return person.name == "Dan" })[0]; // returns the first person named Dan

Answer 2

You should use underscore.js or lodash. They have a method called findWhere which does exactly what you need. The method _.where will return an array if there is more than one matching object.

_.findWhere(people, {name: "dan"});
// will return
// {name: 'Dan', age: '20', favoriteColor: 'blue'}

Answer 3

Make an object constructor. Write a custom method.

function person(name,age,favoriteColor) {
    this.name = name;
    this.age = age;
    this.favoriteColor = favoriteColor;
    this.getInfo = function() {
        return this.age + " - " + this.favoriteColor;
    }
}

var people = [];

people.push(new person('dan','20','blue'));

alert(people[0].getInfo());