compressing object hierarchies in JavaScript

Question

Is there a generic approach to \"compressing\" nested objects to a single level:

var myObj = {
    a: \"hello\",
    b: {
        c: \"world\"
    }
}

compress(         


        

Answer 1

Here's a quick one, but watch out, b/c it will not work w/ arrays and null values (b/c their typeof returns "object").

var flatten = function(obj, prefix) {
  if(typeof prefix === "undefined") {
    prefix = "";
  }
  var copy = {};
  for (var p in obj) {
    if(obj.hasOwnProperty(p)) {
      if(typeof obj[p] === "object") {
        var tmp = flatten(obj[p], p + "_");
        for(var q in tmp) {
          if(tmp.hasOwnProperty(q)) {
            copy[prefix + q] = tmp[q];
          }
        }
      }
      else {
        copy[prefix + p] = obj[p];
      }
    }
  }
  return copy;
}

var myObj = {
  a: "level 1",
  b: {
    a: "level 2",
    b: {
      a: "level 3",
      b: "level 3"
    }
  }
}

var flattened = flatten(myObj);