How to convert variable name to string in JavaScript?

Question

hello everyone,

I am new to stackoverflow but I found it pretty helpful several times. Now I have my own question: Is there a way to convert variable names to strings in javascript? To be more specific:

var a = 1, b = 2, c = 'hello';
var array = [a, b, c];

Now at some point as I go through the array, I need to get variable names (instead of their values) as strings - that would be 'a' or 'b' or 'c'. And I really need it to be a string so it is writeable. How can I do that?

Thank you

jirkap

Answer 1

Use a Javascript object literal:

var obj = {
    'a': 1,
    'b': 2,
    'c': 'hello'
};

You can then traverse it like this:

for (name in obj){
    alert(name);
    alert(obj[name]);
}

And access properties on the object like this:

alert(obj.a);
alert(obj.c);

Answer 2

What you could do is something like:

var hash = {};
hash.a = 1;
hash.b = 2;
hash.c = 'hello';
for(key in hash) {
    // key would be 'a' and hash[key] would be 1, and so on.
}

Answer 3

Thank you both. It works.