How do I dynamically insert and access objects within objects in Javascript?

Question

Let's say you have an object

var employee = [];

How would you prompt (with the prompt function) the user to input information so that it looks like this:

var employee = [
{"firstName":"John", "lastName":"Doe"},
{"firstName":"Anna", "lastName":"Smith"},
{"firstName":"Peter", "lastName": "Jones"}
];

Of course with an unspecified number of arrays. So if your user only inputs information for one employee and then inputs nothing or hits cancel the array will only have one array (for John Doe).

The main thing though is that the user inputs information until they decide that they are done. So an unspecified number of arrays.

I need to do this with a looping prompt even though I understand that prompts suck. A lot.

So here's what I'm trying to do:

Prompt user for an employee. Example input: John Doe
Take string, use split function. After which you would have an array named John Doe
Loop the above until user inputs "" or clicks cancel.
Store all the employees into an object that can be printed to the console.

This is what my code looks like.

var person = {firstname: "", lastname: ""}
var employee = []; //used to store each person

var input = "x"; 

for(var i = 0; input != "" && input != null; i++){
    var input = prompt("Input first and last name"); 

    var results = input.split(); //create an array from the input

    person.firstname = results[0];
    person.lastname = results[1];

    employee[i] = person;//store the person array into the customer array.
}  

console.log(employee[1]["firstname"]); //test output
console.log(employee[0]["lastname"]); //test output

when I test my output however I get undefined. I am trying to access a specific person's first name but an unable to.

Amit Joki · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-12 03:25:58Z

2

You can do it like this

var flag = true, arr = [];
while (flag) {
    arr.push({
        firstname: prompt("What's your first name?") || "John",
        lastname: prompt("What's your last name?") || "Doe"
    });
    flag = confirm("Do you want to continue?");
}

Or else, you can also do

var arr = (prompt("What's your name with first and last name") || "John Doe").split(" ");
arr.push({
    firstname: arr[0],
    lastname: arr[1]
});

edited Oct 12, 2014 at 3:25

answered Oct 12, 2014 at 3:20

Amit Joki

59.4k7 gold badges79 silver badges96 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

Comments

colonelsanders · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-12 03:23:38Z

1

You're calling split() but not providing any parameters. If it's a name, I assume first and last are split by spaces. It should be something like:

var results = input.split(" ");

answered Oct 12, 2014 at 3:23

colonelsanders

8246 silver badges19 bronze badges

Comments

huan feng · Accepted Answer · 2014-10-12 04:06:35Z

Their suggestions are all correct.

And the reason why your code is not working is because you only have single instance of person object, and all of your employee array values reference to this person object. Once you input "", your person object property got an undefined value, so your values in employee array will also be undefined.

you can modify person object to be multiple instances to fixes this error.

function person() {
            return {firstname: "", lastname: ""};
        }
        ;
        var employee = []; //used to store each person

        var input = "x"; 

        for(var i = 0; input != "" && input != null; i++){
            var input = prompt("Input first and last name"); 

            var results = input.split(); //create an array from the input
            per = person();

            per.firstname = results[0];
            per.lastname = results[1];

            employee[i] = per;//store the person array into the customer array.
        }

        console.log('hi');
        console.log(employee[1].firstname);

fiddle here

When I tried your code it resulted in print out the entire name instead of just the first name. It would print John Doe instead of just John even though the code was alert(employee[1].firstname);
Yes, you are correct! This is because you missing add the delimeter in the split function, it should contains a space there: var results = input.split(' '); fiddle has been updated now, you can try it again [link]jsfiddle.net/mLrdjcdp

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

How do I dynamically insert and access objects within objects in Javascript?

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

2 Comments

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

3 Answers 3

Comments

Comments

2 Comments

Related