use jQuery's find() on JSON object

Question

Similar to brnwdrng's question, I'm looking for a way to search through a JSON-like object.
supposing my object's structure is like so:

TestObj = {     "Categories": [{         "Products": [{             "id": "a01",             "name": "Pine",             "description": "Short description of pine."         },         {             "id": "a02",             "name": "Birch",             "description": "Short description of birch."         },         {             "id": "a03",             "name": "Poplar",             "description": "Short description of poplar."         }],         "id": "A",         "title": "Cheap",         "description": "Short description of category A."     },     {         "Product": [{             "id": "b01",             "name": "Maple",             "description": "Short description of maple."         },         {             "id": "b02",             "name": "Oak",             "description": "Short description of oak."         },         {             "id": "b03",             "name": "Bamboo",             "description": "Short description of bamboo."         }],         "id": "B",         "title": "Moderate",         "description": "Short description of category B."     }] }; 

I'd like to get an object with id="A".

I've tried all sort of stuff such as:

$(TestObj.find(":id='A'")) 

but nothing seems to work.

Can anyone think of a way of retrieving an item based on some criteria without using 'each'?

Answer 1

jQuery doesn't work on plain object literals. You can use the below function in a similar way to search all 'id's (or any other property), regardless of its depth in the object:

function getObjects(obj, key, val) {     var objects = [];     for (var i in obj) {         if (!obj.hasOwnProperty(i)) continue;         if (typeof obj[i] == 'object') {             objects = objects.concat(getObjects(obj[i], key, val));         } else if (i == key && obj[key] == val) {             objects.push(obj);         }     }     return objects; } 

Use like so:

getObjects(TestObj, 'id', 'A'); // Returns an array of matching objects