console.log showing contents of array object

Question

I have tried using console.log so I can see the content of my array that contains multiple objects. However I get an error saying console.log is not an object etc. I'm using jquery 1.6.2 and my array is like this:

filters = {dvals:[{'brand':'1', 'count':'1'},
                  {'brand':'2', 'count':'2'}, 
                  {'brand':'3', 'count':'3'}]}

console.log(filters);

What I want to to do is write out the contents of array(filters) to an alert box (that's what I thought console.log did) in the filters format. How do I do that?

Answer 1

there are two potential simple solutions to dumping an array as string. Depending on the environment you're using:

…with modern browsers use JSON:

JSON.stringify(filters);
// returns this
"{"dvals":[{"brand":"1","count":"1"},{"brand":"2","count":"2"},{"brand":"3","count":"3"}]}"

…with something like node.js you can use console.info()

console.info(filters);
// will output:
{ dvals: 
[ { brand: '1', count: '1' },
  { brand: '2', count: '2' },
  { brand: '3', count: '3' } ] }

---

Edit:

JSON.stringify comes with two more optional parameters. The third "spaces" parameter enables pretty printing:

JSON.stringify(
                obj,      // the object to stringify
                replacer, // a function or array transforming the result
                spaces    // prettyprint indentation spaces
              )

example:

JSON.stringify(filters, null, "  ");
// returns this
"{
 "dvals": [
  {
   "brand": "1",
   "count": "1"
  },
  {
   "brand": "2",
   "count": "2"
  },
  {
   "brand": "3",
   "count": "3"
  }
 ]
}"