Fastest way to flatten / un-flatten nested JSON objects

Question

I threw some code together to flatten and un-flatten complex/nested JSON objects. It works, but it\'s a bit slow (triggers the \'long script\' warning).

For the flat

Answer 1

I added +/- 10-15% efficiency to the selected answer by minor code refactoring and moving the recursive function outside of the function namespace.

See my question: Are namespaced functions reevaluated on every call? for why this slows nested functions down.

function _flatten (target, obj, path) {
  var i, empty;
  if (obj.constructor === Object) {
    empty = true;
    for (i in obj) {
      empty = false;
      _flatten(target, obj[i], path ? path + '.' + i : i);
    }
    if (empty && path) {
      target[path] = {};
    }
  } 
  else if (obj.constructor === Array) {
    i = obj.length;
    if (i > 0) {
      while (i--) {
        _flatten(target, obj[i], path + '[' + i + ']');
      }
    } else {
      target[path] = [];
    }
  }
  else {
    target[path] = obj;
  }
}

function flatten (data) {
  var result = {};
  _flatten(result, data, null);
  return result;
}

See benchmark.