How to parse (infinite) nested object notation?

Posted by kyogron on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by kyogron
Published on 2012-12-01T17:01:17Z Indexed on 2012/12/01 17:03 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 195

I am currently breaking my head about transforming this object hash:

"food": {
    "healthy": {
        "fruits": ['apples', 'bananas', 'oranges'],
        "vegetables": ['salad', 'onions']
    },
    "unhealthy": {
        "fastFood": ['burgers', 'chicken', 'pizza']
    }
}

to something like this:

food:healthy:fruits:apples
food:healthy:fruits:bananas
food:healthy:fruits:oranges
food:healthy:vegetables:salad
food:healthy:vegetables:onions
food:unhealthy:fastFood:burgers
food:unhealthy:fastFood:chicken
food:unhealthy:fastFood:pizza

In theory it actually is just looping through the object while keeping track of the path and the end result.

Unfortunately I do not know how I could loop down till I have done all nested.

var path;
var pointer;
function loop(obj) {
    for (var propertyName in obj) {
        path = propertyName;
        pointer = obj[propertyName];

        if (pointer typeof === 'object') {
            loop(pointer);
        } else {
            break;
        }        
    }
};

function parse(object) {
    var collection = [];

};

There are two issues which play each out:

  1. If I use recurse programming it looses the state of the properties which are already parsed.
  2. If I do not use it I cannot parse infinite.

Is there some idea how to handle this?

Regards

© Stack Overflow or respective owner

Related posts about JavaScript

Related posts about parsing