| How to look up data in string or table?
Array? Hash? Something else? |
MichaelBluejay
msg:4451219 | 9:44 am on May 9, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Let's say I have data such as the following:
female 25 486-72
female 30 398-27
female 35 287-39
male 25 182-28
male 30 298-21
male 35 929-88
How do I look up the first two columns to get the third, without looping through the whole thing? For example, how do I look up "male" and "25", to get the result "182-28"?
I was thinking of putting my data in a hidden <textarea>, but I'm not opposed to hard-coding it into variables manually.
I've hit up the search engines but can't find anything that seems relevant.
Thank you very much for your help!
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g1smd
msg:4451226 | 10:01 am on May 9, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Use an array?
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Fotiman
msg:4451298 | 1:38 pm on May 9, 2012 (gmt 0) |
As an array of arrays:
var data = [
["female", "25", "182-28"],
["female", "30", "398-27"],
["female", "35", "287-39"],
["male", "25", "182-28"],
["male", "30", "298-21"],
["male", "35", "929-88"]
];
function search(searchValue1, searchValue2) {
var i;
for (i = 0; i < data.length; i++) {
if (data[i][0] === searchValue1 && data[i][1] === searchValue2) {
return data[i][2];
}
}
}
var result = search("male", "25");
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As a hash:
var data = {
"female-25": "182-28",
"female-30": "398-27",
"female-35": "287-39",
"male-25": "182-28",
"male-30": "298-21",
"male-35": "929-88"
};
function search(searchValue1, searchValue2) {
return data[searchValue1 + "-" + searchValue2];
}
var result = search("male", "25");
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Or another approach:
var data = {
"female": {
"25": "182-28",
"30": "398-27",
"35": "287-39"
},
"male": {
"25": "182-28",
"30": "298-21",
"35": "929-88"
}
};
function search(searchValue1, searchValue2) {
return data[searchValue1][searchValue2];
}
var result = search("male", "25");
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MichaelBluejay
msg:4451566 | 11:17 pm on May 9, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Thanks Fotiman, that's super-helpful! I was hoping that there'd be a way to access the data directly (without a function), but this is not too bad. I'm going to take a stab at writing my own function to get the data from a hidden textarea into one of those structures, but if I fail I might be back to ask for more help.
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Fotiman
msg:4451579 | 11:55 pm on May 9, 2012 (gmt 0) |
Well, you could bypass the search function and just do exactly what that function is doing. For example, in the last example I posted, instead of calling the search function you could just do:
data["male"]["25"]
to get "182-28".
The function was just a way to hide the implementation details (you don't need to know if the data is stored in a hash, or in an array, you just need to pass in the 2 values).
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MichaelBluejay
msg:4451647 | 4:12 am on May 10, 2012 (gmt 0) |
I see now, I didn't look at it very closely to begin with. Thanks again!
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