Number of elements in a javascript object

Question

Is there a way to get (from somewhere) the number of elements in a javascript object?? (i.e. constant-time complexity).

I cant find a property or method that retriev

Answer 1

To do this in any ES5-compatible environment

Object.keys(obj).length

(Browser support from here)
(Doc on Object.keys here, includes method you can add to non-ECMA5 browsers)

Answer 2

The concept of number/length/dimensionality doesn't really make sense for an Object, and needing it suggests you really want an Array to me.

Edit: Pointed out to me that you want an O(1) for this. To the best of my knowledge no such way exists I'm afraid.

Answer 3

function count(){
    var c= 0;
    for(var p in this) if(this.hasOwnProperty(p))++c;
    return c;
}

var O={a: 1, b: 2, c: 3};

count.call(O);

Answer 4

Although JS implementations might keep track of such a value internally, there's no standard way to get it.

In the past, Mozilla's Javascript variant exposed the non-standard __count__, but it has been removed with version 1.8.5.

For cross-browser scripting you're stuck with explicitly iterating over the properties and checking hasOwnProperty():

function countProperties(obj) {
    var count = 0;

    for(var prop in obj) {
        if(obj.hasOwnProperty(prop))
            ++count;
    }

    return count;
}

In case of ECMAScript 5 capable implementations, this can also be written as (Kudos to Avi Flax)

function countProperties(obj) {
    return Object.keys(obj).length;
}

Keep in mind that you'll also miss properties which aren't enumerable (eg an array's length).

If you're using a framework like jQuery, Prototype, Mootools, $whatever-the-newest-hype, check if they come with their own collections API, which might be a better solution to your problem than using native JS objects.

Answer 5

AFAIK, there is no way to do this reliably, unless you switch to an array. Which honestly, doesn't seem strange - it's seems pretty straight forward to me that arrays are countable, and objects aren't.

Probably the closest you'll get is something like this

// Monkey patching on purpose to make a point
Object.prototype.length = function()
{
  var i = 0;
  for ( var p in this ) i++;
  return i;
}

alert( {foo:"bar", bar: "baz"}.length() ); // alerts 3

But this creates problems, or at least questions. All user-created properties are counted, including the _length function itself! And while in this simple example you could avoid it by just using a normal function, that doesn't mean you can stop other scripts from doing this. so what do you do? Ignore function properties?

Object.prototype.length = function()
{
  var i = 0;
  for ( var p in this )
  {
      if ( 'function' == typeof this[p] ) continue;
      i++;
  }
  return i;
}

alert( {foo:"bar", bar: "baz"}.length() ); // alerts 2

In the end, I think you should probably ditch the idea of making your objects countable and figure out another way to do whatever it is you're doing.

Answer 6

if you are already using jQuery in your build just do this:

$(yourObject).length

It works nicely for me on objects, and I already had jQuery as a dependancy.