How to use a variable for a key in a JavaScript object literal?

Question

Why does the following work?

<something>.stop().animate(
    { 'top' : 10 }, 10
);

Whereas this doesn't work:

var thetop = 'top';
<something>.stop().animate(
    { thetop : 10 }, 10
);

To make it even clearer: At the moment I'm not able to pass a CSS property to the animate function as a variable.

Answer 1

{ thetop : 10 } is a valid object literal. The code will create an object with a property named thetop that has a value of 10. Both the following are the same:

obj = { thetop : 10 };
obj = { "thetop" : 10 };

In ES5 and earlier, you cannot use a variable as a property name inside an object literal. Your only option is to do the following:

var thetop = "top";

// create the object literal
var aniArgs = {};

// Assign the variable property name with a value of 10
aniArgs[thetop] = 10; 

// Pass the resulting object to the animate method
<something>.stop().animate(
    aniArgs, 10  
);  

ES6 defines ComputedPropertyName as part of the grammar for object literals, which allows you to write the code like this:

var thetop = "top",
    obj = { [thetop]: 10 };

console.log(obj.top); // -> 10

You can use this new syntax in the latest versions of each mainstream browser.

Answer 2

With ECMAScript 2015 you are now able to do it directly in object declaration with the brackets notation: 

var obj = {
  [key]: value
}

Where key can be any sort of expression (e.g. a variable) returning a value.

So here your code would look like:

<something>.stop().animate({
  [thetop]: 10
}, 10)

Where thetop will be evaluated before being used as key.

Answer 3

ES5 quote that says it should not work

Note: rules have changed for ES6: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2274327/895245

Spec: http://www.ecma-international.org/ecma-262/5.1/#sec-11.1.5

PropertyName :

• IdentifierName
• StringLiteral
• NumericLiteral

[...]

The production PropertyName : IdentifierName is evaluated as follows:

1. Return the String value containing the same sequence of characters as the IdentifierName.

The production PropertyName : StringLiteral is evaluated as follows:

1. Return the SV [String value] of the StringLiteral.

The production PropertyName : NumericLiteral is evaluated as follows:

1. Let nbr be the result of forming the value of the NumericLiteral.
2. Return ToString(nbr).

This means that:

• { theTop : 10 } is the exact same as { 'theTop' : 10 }

  The PropertyName theTop is an IdentifierName, so it gets converted to the 'theTop' string value, which is the string value of 'theTop'.

• It is not possible to write object initializers (literals) with variable keys.

  The only three options are IdentifierName (expands to string literal), StringLiteral, and NumericLiteral (also expands to a string).

Answer 4

ES6 / 2020

If you're trying to push data to an object using "key:value" from any other source, you can use something like this:

let obj = {}
let key = "foo"
let value = "bar"

obj[`${key}`] = value

// A `console.log(obj)` would return:
// {foo: "bar}

// A `typeof obj` would return:
// "object"

Hope this helps someone :)