Set a dynamic variable name in javascript

Question

I am trying to make my code look a little prettier, which is a function that has maybe 16 arguments and does a lot of repeated code with these arguments.

Here's some sample code to demonstrate my problem:

function foo(varList, a, b, c, d, e, f, ...) {
 varList.map(bar => {
 console.log('Result: ' + bar);
 }
}
const vars = ['b', 'd', 'f'];
foo(vars, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5); 

Results in

b, d, f

I am actually trying to access the data in those variable names instead, so it should print:

1, 3, 5

Is there a way to dynamically work with variables like this?

• Nir Alfasi: Why not create an object that maps these letters to these numbers, e.g. const obj = {'b': 1, 'd': 3, 'f': 5} then when you want to print the corresponding number do: obj['b'] or obj.b
• Jacob Evans: That's actually exactly what I ended up doing. Post as answer and will mark. Thanks!

Answer 1

As @alfasin answered, just use the power of JavaScript Objects. An object consists of key-value pairs, where each key is a string and the corresponding value can be an arbitrary JavaScript object.

For your example code, you can simply write:

const vars = {'b': 1, 'd': 3, 'f': 5};

To access the value of a certain object key, either write vars.b or vars['b'] to access the value of b (which is 1) for example.