How to find differences between two JavaScript arrays of objects?

Valip picture Valip · Aug 22, 2016 · Viewed 8k times · Source

I have two JavaScript arrays orig (the original array of objects) and update (the updated orig array of objects) that have the same length and contain objects, and I want to output the differences between the each pair of objects.

Example:

var orig = [{enabled:"true", name:"Obj1", id:3},{enabled:"true", name:"Obj2", id:4}]; 

var update = [{enabled:"true", name:"Obj1", id:3}, {enabled:"true", name:"Obj2-updated", id:4}];

The output should be: name:"Obj2-updated"

I implemented something but it needs optimization...

for(var prop=0; prop<orig.length; prop++) {
  for(prop=0; prop<update.length; prop++) {
    if(orig[prop].enabled != update.enabled) { console.log(update.enabled) }
    if(orig[prop].name != update[prop].name) { console.log(update[prop].name) }
    if(orig[prop].id != update[prop].id) { console.log(update[prop].id) }
  }
}

Answer

Nina Scholz picture Nina Scholz · Aug 22, 2016

You could filter the keys and get a result set with the updated keys.

var orig = [{ enabled: "true", name: "Obj1", id: 3 }, { enabled: "true", name: "Obj2", id: 4 }],
    update = [{ enabled: "true", name: "Obj1", id: 3 }, { enabled: "true", name: "Obj2-updated", id: 4 }],
    difference = [];

orig.forEach(function (a, i) {
    Object.keys(a).forEach(function (k) {
        if (a[k] !== update[i][k]) {
            difference.push({ id: update[i].id, key: k, value: update[i][k], index: i });
        }
    });
});

console.log(difference);