Getting an object by its name contained in a string

Question

I am trying to get a const object indirectly by its name, which is contained in a string. I have no idea if this is possible but if it is, it would make my life a hell of a lot easier. As an example in pseudocode: var obj = findObject("myConstObject"); I know this is a strange thing to need, but I am dealing with quite a large amount of data, and being able to grab objects in this way would work a lot better with my existing code. Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

You can use Object.getOwnPropertyNames() to get all property names of an object. Here is an example that demonstrates how to search a myObj1 that is in the global window scope, and a myObj2 that is in the myStuff object scope:

// object attached to window object:
myObj1 = { a: 1 };

function getKeyNames(aThis) {
  return Object.getOwnPropertyNames(aThis || globalThis).sort();
}

console.log('search myObj1 in global scope:', getKeyNames().filter(name => name === 'myObj1'));

// object attached to my on stuff:
const myStuff = {
    myObj2: { b: 2 },
    deeperLevel: {
      myObj3: { b: 3 },
    }
}

console.log('search myObj2 in myStuff scope:', getKeyNames(myStuff).filter(name => name === 'myObj2'));

Output:

search myObj1 in global scope: [
  "myObj1"
]
search myObj2 in myStuff scope: [
  "myObj2"
]

Notes:

• if needed, expand this code to search recursively the object hierarchy, so that myStuff.deeperLevel.myObj3 can be found searching myStuff
• if needed, expand this code to search a list of objects of interest