JavaScript is a high-level, interpreted, and dynamically typed client-side scripting language. JavaScript is used to add dynamic features to the static HTML. Everything is an object in JavaScript. Objects in JavaScript can be declared using figure brackets {..} and the objects may comprise certain properties. These properties are basically key-value pairs. The key is an identifier that is used to store and retrieve values. Inverting key-value pairs is tedious using conventional methods. But with the advent of “underscore.js”, inversion of key values can be performed using the inbuilt method _.invert(). In this article, we shall discuss both methods of inverting key-value pairs of JavaScript objects.
First Approach: In this example, we will demonstrate the conventional method of inverting key-value pairs. At first, a student object is created with properties “name”, “age”, “std” and “fees”. An inverse() function is defined which takes the student object as a parameter and loops through each key of the object. A new object retobj is defined which stores the inverted key-value pairs.
Example: This example shows the above-explained approach.
Javascript
function inverse(obj){ var retobj = {}; for ( var key in obj){ retobj[obj[key]] = key; } return retobj; } var student = { name : "Jack" , age: 18, std : 12, fees : 5000 } console.log( "Object before inversion" ); console.log(student); student = inverse(student); console.log( "Object after inversion" ); console.log(student); |
Output:
Object before inversion {name: 'Jack', age: 18, std: 12, fees: 5000} Object after inversion {12: 'std', 18: 'age', 5000: 'fees', Jack: 'name'}
Second Approach: In this example, we use the _.invert() method of “underscore.js” to invert the key-value pairs of the object. The method takes the object as a parameter and returns a copy of the object with the keys as values and values as keys. The “student” object is passed to the _.invert() method. The method returns the inverted copy of the “student” object. The program imports the external “underscore.js” library to use inbuilt methods. The results are displayed on the webpage.
Syntax:
_.invert(object)
Example: This example shows the above-explained approach.
HTML
< script src = </ script > < script type = "text/javascript" > var student = { name : "Jack", age: 18, std : 12, fees : 5000 } console.log("Object before inversion"); console.log(JSON.stringify(student)); student = JSON.stringify(_.invert(student)); console.log("Object after inversion"); console.log(student); </ script > |
Output:
Object before inversion {name: 'Jack', age: 18, std: 12, fees: 5000} Object after inversion {12: 'std', 18: 'age', 5000: 'fees', Jack: 'name'}