what's wrong with this javascript object?

Question

I think it's fairly clear what I want to do here:

var viewnames = {};
viewnames['region-a'] = "Region A";
viewnames['region-b'] = "Region B, partial";
viewnames['region-c'] = "Region C";

function loadView(view_name) {
    alert('view_name: ' + view_name);
    alert('viewname: ' + viewnames.view_name);
    document.getElementById("viewtitle").innerText = view_name;
}

But if I call this with view_name as region-a the alert says viewnames.view_name is undefined. What is the problem?

Answer 1

You must use viewnames[view_name] inside your function loadView

Answer 2

You need to index it by name, e.g. viewnames[view_name]

Answer 3

Access it by associative array index (viewnames[view_name]). Please DO NOT use an eval construct (eval("var tmp = viewnames." + view_name + ";")).

Answer 4

I upvoted @Mic's answer, but as an alternative -- if you want to use the object.property notation as you have it, you would need to declare it in the following manner:

var viewnames = new function() {
    this.regionA = "Region A"; 
    this.regionB = "Region B, partial"; 
}; 

viewnames.regionC = "Region C"; 

This works, but it's not terribly recommended. Use the other answer as the preferred method.