Merging values from an array of strings into a nested object in javascript

Question

I want to merge values from an array into a static nested object. The array containing the values is something like this,

['name=ABC XYZ', 'hobbies=[M,N,O,P]', 'profession=S', 'age=27']

and the object in which the values has to be merged is,

const person = {
    details_1: {
      name: null,
      hobbies: null,
      profession: null
    },
    details_2: {
      age: null
    }
  };

I want my output object to look like below,

const updated_person = {
    details_1: {
      name: 'ABC XYZ',
      hobbies: [M,N,O,P],
      profession: 'S'
    },
    details_2: {
      age: 27
    }
  };

Thanks a lot for your help!

Answer 1

I made another solution with a different approach. Here I used an interface weher I described the desired data structure. In the second part the string array is tranformed into key and value pairs. Thereform are filtered the keys of interface and added into an empty object literal.

const data = ["name=ABC XYZ", "hobbies=[M,N,O,P]", "profession=S", "age=27"];

const dataInterface = {
  details_1: { name: null, hobbies: null, profession: null },
  details_2: { age: null },
};

function orederData(arr) {
  const record = arr.map((item) => {
    let [key, value] = item.split("=");
    if (value[0] === "[" && value[value.length - 1] === "]") {
      value = value.slice(1, value.length - 1).split(",");
    }
    return { key, value };
  });

  const dataBlock = {};
  Object.keys(dataInterface).map((detail) => {
    dataBlock[detail] = {};
    Object.keys(dataInterface[detail]).forEach((dataKey) => {
      dataBlock[detail][dataKey] = record.filter((record) => {
        return record.key === dataKey;
      })[0].value;
    });
  });
  return dataBlock;
}

const orderedData = orederData(data);
console.log(orderedData);

Answer 2

You can simply achieve this by iterating the input array.

const arr = ['name=ABC XYZ', 'hobbies=[M,N,O,P]', 'profession=S', 'age=27'];

const person = {
  details_1: {},
  details_2: {}
};

arr.forEach(item => {
  (item.split('=')[0] !== 'age') ? person.details_1[item.split('=')[0]] = item.split('=')[1] : person.details_2[item.split('=')[0]] = item.split('=')[1]
});

console.log(person);

Answer 3

There is no way to cleanly merge an unstructured array into a structured object such that the array values end up in the appropriately keyed person properties.

javascript does provide the assign() function that merges objects but for YOUR requirements your source data needs to be an object similarly structured and not an array.

so this:

['name=ABC XYZ', 'hobbies=[M,N,O,P]', 'profession=S', 'age=27']

would need to become this:

const source= [{details_1: {"name":"ABC XYZ", "hobbies":"[M,N,O,P]", "profession":"S"}, details_2: {"age":"27"}}]

such that a call to Object.assign():

const new_person =  Object.assign(person, source[0]);

fills this

const person = {
  details_1: {
    name: null,
    hobbies: null,
    profession: null
  },
  details_2: {
    age: null
  }
};

properly, though you may need to clone or instantiate and empty person first.

or, if person is an Object you could have a fill() method that knows what to do with the array data.