How do I define an object variable structure in JavaScript?

Question

I want to define something like the following object structure, so I can populate it from a number of sources. What statements do I need to define it?

Offices[] is an open-ended array as is rel[] underneath it. All the elements are strings or maybe numbers.

Offices.name
Offices.desc
Offices.rel.type
Offices.rel.pt

Solution 1

First I would make Offices an array:

var Offices = [];

Then populate that with objects:

var obj = {
    name: "test",
    desc: "Some description",
    rel: []
}

Offices.push(obj);

Now you have your array (Offices) populated with one object, so you could access it via Offices[0].desc -- you can also populate the rel array with Offices[0].rel.push(anotherObj)

Solution 2

If i understand correctly, you want to place multiple objects of the same type inside the Offices array. In order to easily build multiple objects of the same type you could use a constructor:

function Office(name, desc, rel){
  this.name = name;
  this.desc = desc;
  this.rel = rel;
}

Now you can declare an array to hold instances of the above type:

var offices = [];

And you can add new instances like this:

offices.push(new Office('John', 'good guy', []));

You can apply the same idea to the rel array to enforce the structure of the objects, or simply use object and array literals:

offices.push(new Office('John', 'good guy', [{ type : 'M', pt : 3 }, { type : 'Q', pt : 2 }]);

Comments

[Pointy]

Well you may want to start with a reference about basic JavaScript syntax.