Convert object's properties and values to array of key value pairs

Question

I'm fairly new to JavaScript and am not sure this is possible to do but basically I would like to take an object and convert it into an array of strings in the format; array[0] = 'prop1=value1'

The reasoning behind this is that I'm having a user enter a list of k=v pairs into a form, later it's written as an object within a json blob. Going from the key value csl to the json object was simple, now I need to go back the other way (I've received the JSON via an ajax call and want to populate a blank form). Is this possible in JavaScript? If not please offer a reasonable work around.

Sample code;

Object in debugger;

 Object
        private_key: "private-key"
        public_key: "public-key"

I need to convert that to;

 "private_key=private-key,public_key=public-key"

Basically I need something like this (pseudo code)

var outputString = '';
foreach (prop in obj)
{
    outputString = outputString + prop.tostring() + '=' + prop.value + ',';
}

Answer 1

You're probably looking for something along the lines of

var obj = {value1: 'prop1', value2: 'prop2', value3: 'prop3'};
var arr = [];
for (var key in obj) {
    if (obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {
        arr.push(key + '=' + obj[key]);
    }
};
var result = arr.join(',');
alert(result);

Notice that it will work fine if your values are strings; if they're complex objects then you'll need to add more code.

Or you can just use jQuery.param, which does what you want, even for complex types (although it uses the & character as the separator, instead of the comma.