JS: Associative array access over variable?

Question

after progging php since 3 years, im hanging at javascript. Is it possible to get value of an assoziative array with a variable? Example:

var a = new Array();
a["ANDI"] = "USER";
var test = "ANDI";

alert(a[test]);

Any suggestions, how I could workaround that? Maybe with objects?

Thx for help!

Answer 1

Arrays are indexed by numbers. Objects have properties that can be accessed by name.

var myContainer = {
  'User': 'Andy'
};

var key = 'User';

myContainer[key]; // Returns 'Andy'.

Answer 2

Yup. That should alert USER.

But JavaScript has objects. If you want to do that, you'd probably want..

var a = {
    "ANDI": "USER"
};

For more details of JavaScript's object notations, check out JSON.org.