How to look up data in string or table?

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How to look up data in string or table?

Array? Hash? Something else?

MichaelBluejay

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!

g1smd

10:01 am on May 9, 2012 (gmt 0)

Use an array?

Fotiman

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");

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");

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");

MichaelBluejay

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.

Fotiman

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).

MichaelBluejay

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!