parse json string into a javascript objects

Question

I'm using Firefox 19.0.2. I receive a JSON string (into a JavaScript function) with changing sizes,

sometimes it is:

var jsonstring = {"CA":"CA","NY":"NY","TX":"TX"}

sometimes it is:

var jsonstring = {"Hello":"Hello","Goodbye":"Goodbye"}

I want to create a result array like this (in case of the first example):

data[0].value = "CA"
data[0].text = "CA"
data[1].value = "NY"
data[1].text = "NY"
data[2].value = "TX"
data[2].text = "TX"

How do I do that?

I read tens of early posts here and tried a couple of for loops, but nothing works.

• Pointy: Just to be pedantic: those are not "JSON strings", those are JavaScript objects declared with object literal syntax.
• James M: @Pointy That's not pedantic, that's a very important distinction.
• Rodniko: Could this be the reason that when i loop on jsonstring with indexes: jsonstring[0], jsonstring[1]... i get letters instead of strings? jsonstring[0] = "{" ,jsonstring[1] = """,jsonstring[2] = "C"..... ?
• Rodniko: @Pointy can you please explain? i don't know what you mean...
• Pointy: @Rodniko well a JSON string is a string value that contains (unparsed) JSON. What you posted are JavaScript object literal expressions. They look like JSON because JSON is a simplified form of JavaScript object literal syntax, but they don't need parsing because the JavaScript interpreter already parsed them.

Answer 1

You can use JSON.parse to convert to an object (In your example you arleady have an object though):

var obj= JSON.parse('{"CA":"CA","NY":"NY","TX":"TX"}')

Keep in mind, you can't depend on the order of the attributes in an object, so you could not accomplish what you are trying to do above in a for loop.

• Rodniko: Thank you Justin, but what do i do afterwards? i tried a loop but there is no obj[0]. i also tried obj[0].key but it doesn't work. how do i read the content of obj in a loop after the parsing?
• Justin Bicknell: Try pasting the above code into your browsers console, chrome has a good one. Then play around with the object, example: obj.CA == 'CA'

Answer 2

The transform after using JSON.parse to get an object from the JSON, would look something like that:

obj = {
 CA: 'CA',
 LA: 'LA'
};
arr = [];
for (var key in obj) {
 if(!obj.hasOwnProperty(key))
 continue;
 arr.push({value: key, text: obj[key]});
}
// Output
[{ value: "CA", text: "CA" }, { value: "LA", text: "LA" }]