Javascript: Best way to convert associative array to string and back the other way later?

Mark picture Mark · Jan 21, 2013 · Viewed 25.9k times · Source

I have an associative array as follows:

var AssocArray = { id:0, folder:'Next', text:'Apple' };

Now I need to store this in a database, so I figure I would just convert this into a string, store it in the database and then pull it out of the database and put it back into a javascript array later on.

The catch is that the actual # of items, and the array variables will be different every time (hence why I wanted to store it as one long string instead).

What’s the best way to convert this associative array into a string, and then also vice versa, how to convert a string into an associative array?

Answer

VisioN picture VisioN · Jan 21, 2013

There is nothing better than JSON for it:

var str = JSON.stringify(obj);
// >> "{"id":0,"folder":"Next","text":"Apple"}"

var obj = JSON.parse(str);
// >> Object({ id: 0, folder: "Next", text: "Apple" })