Keep order of objects inside a JSON String after they are parsed

Question

I receive the following JSON string from an API function.

"Inbound": {
    "callRelatedFields": ["ANI",
    "DNIS"],
    "objects": {
        "Contact": [{
            "displayName": "Name",
            "apiName": "Name"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Email",
            "apiName": "Email"
        }],
        "Account": [{
            "displayName": "Account Name",
            "apiName": "Name"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Phone",
            "apiName": "Phone"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Fax",
            "apiName": "Fax"
        }],
        "cnx__Phone__c": [{
            "displayName": "Phone Name",
            "apiName": "Name"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Phone Number Line 1",
            "apiName": "cnx__Phone_Number_Line_1__c"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Phone Number Line 2",
            "apiName": "cnx__Phone_Number_Line_2__c"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Type",
            "apiName": "cnx__Type__c"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Location",
            "apiName": "cnx__Location__c"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Call Manager",
            "apiName": "cnx__Call_Manager__c"
        },
        {
            "displayName": "Mac Address",
            "apiName": "cnx__Mac_Address__c"
        }]
    },
    "screenPopSettings": {
        "screenPopsOpenWithin": "ExistingWindow",
        "SingleMatch": {
            "screenPopType": "PopToEntity"
        },
        "NoMatch": {
            "screenPopType": "DoNotPop"
        },
        "MultipleMatches": {
            "screenPopType": "DoNotPop"
        }
    }
}

The order of the objects inside "objects" is important! But when i parse this JSON string with JSON.parse, the order of those objects is lost.

Is there any good way to keep the order of those objects after they are parsed.

I tried to manipulate the string and convert the whole "objects" into an array, but this turned out to become way too complicated and hacky.

Answer 1

I have a suspicion that the thing that makes you think the keys have changed order is that Chrome devtools show objects with their keys sorted in alphabetical order. Whereas if you use Object.keys() or the equivalent JS to manually iterate through the keys, you will find they come out in the order they were defined in the JSON string.

Here is the equivalent JS for Object.keys():

function objectKeys(obj) {
    var keys = [];
    if (!obj) return keys;
    for (var key in obj) {
        if (obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
            keys.push(key);
        }
    }
}

When I call this with the objects part of the parsed object I get the following array:

["Contact", "Account", "cnx__Phone__c"]