Javascript nested arrays

Question

I am currently developing a website to do with cooking and will store recipes.

At the moment I am planning to store the recipes in a JS nested array. The array will contain all the recipes and then within each of the recipes will be another array containing all the ingredients for that recipe.

What would be the best way to structure this nested array?

Currently I have the following but I'm not entirely sure this is the best/correct way to do it...

Any help is much appreciated.

var recipes = [
 {
 name:"pizza",
 ingredients: {
 "tomato",
 "cheese",
 "meat"
 }
 }
]

• user2246674: I think that's a perfectly fine way, although it should be: ingredients: [..] if an array is desired (it is a syntax error now due to an invalid object literal). Also, what about quantities of ingredients? Might want to expand that out.

Answer 1

I agree with @smakateer regarding associated array. However I would improve it a bit to:

var recipes = {
 "pizza": { 
 "ingredients": ["tomato", "cheese", "meat" ], //or "ingredients": [ {"name":"tomato", "howMany": 3} ]
 //thanks to this it will be easier extendable, i.e.
 "description": "Some description",
 imageUrl: URL
 }
}

EDIT: You'll probably have many receips for pizza, so you could store them in array of objects under one key.

...
"pizza": [ {...}, {...} ],
"dumplings": []
...

• Teemu: I mean this is a recipe, not an order... No, just teasing, this is a good idea, but I'd created it like ingredients: [[tomato, 2 pcs], [cheese, 200 g]...] etc., though finally a good construction depends on how OP want's to use the "db"...
• Wirus: Yeah, well... property name is not perfect, thanks for code review :) Hmm, regarding your second comment, I prefer object instead of array in this case. I would use array if I'd have properties with the same meaning in it (like arrayOfNames = [ "name1", "name2"]. Not in case when I want to have different properties in it. It's much more easier maintainable as object imho.

Answer 2

I would suggest moving the name to the top level of the array and switching it to an associated array of strings to arrays:

var recipes = {
 "pizza": [
 "tomato",
 "cheese",
 "meat"
 ]
}

Then you can call each recipe by name and get the iterable list of ingredients.

• user2246674: While it's more terse, it's also harder to map onto domain objects or extend: what happens if each product has a description? Or what about if two recipes share the same name? There are "Swedish pancakes" recipes and there are "Swedish pancake" recipes .. and they all produce different results :-/
• smakateer: If that's the case, then it's a different question. Then, his original way would probably be more appropriate.