Is this the best way to transform a string into an object in Node.js?

Question

The code below is working, however, I think it is a lot of coding. I am uncomfortable with this. Does someone know a more concise way to write this?

The main goal is extracting a sort param from a HTTP query and sort a Mongoose/Mongodb collection.

The sort query is GET /flavors?sort=id ASC, so, I took this string ["id", "ASC"] in sort and transformed it in {id : ASC} in sortStr

router.get("/", (req, res) => {
      var { sort } = req.query;
      var v_fields = sort.split(",");
      var v_field = v_fields[0].replace('[', '');
      var v_order = v_fields[1].replace(']', '');
      var sortStr = `{ ${v_field} : ${v_order} }`;
      var re = new RegExp(`"`, 'g');
      sortStr = sortStr.replace(re, '');

      Flavor.find().sort(sortStr).then(result => {
...
}

If you changed the query to be ?sort=id&sort=ASC I believe that req.query.sort would be ['id', 'ASC'] using body parser with a particular configuration. Might have to dig around, but that would probably be more robust than doing hand-written string manipulation to get the format you want. — Patrick Roberts
– Patrick Roberts, Commented Sep 14, 2018 at 15:02
Or IF you want to use an object then Express can automatically handle it if you structure the query as such: /flavors?sort[id]=ASC and accessed via req.query.sort => {id: 'ASC'}. — Jason Cust
– Jason Cust, Commented Sep 14, 2018 at 15:04

sbrass · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-14 15:03:28Z

1

If I understand you correctly, and your sort string always represents an array containing two elements, you could do something like this:

var s='["id", "ASC"]';
var arr=JSON.parse(s);
var sortObj={};
sortObj[arr[0]]=arr[1];

answered Sep 14, 2018 at 15:03

sbrass

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1 Comment

Aldo Over a year ago

That is perfect, it worked and reduced a lot of code. Thanks.

Jonas Wilms · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-14 15:04:27Z

0

Yes there is:

 const [key, order] = req.query.sort.split(" ");
 Flavor.find().sort({ [key]: order }).then(/*...*/);

Concerning your code:

1) vfields is an array, and the arrays elements do not contain any [ or ] in your example so there is no need to remove them.

2) sort expects an object, so you should pass an object not a string.

answered Sep 14, 2018 at 15:04

Jonas Wilms

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1 Comment

Aldo Over a year ago

It does not work, when I extract the sort from the req it is a string representing an array, not an array. So, it has [ and ]

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