Convert JS Object to form data

Question

How can I can convert my JS Object to FormData?

The reason why I want to do this is, I have an object that I constructed out of the ~100 form field valu

Answer 1

I had a scenario where nested JSON had to be serialised in a linear fashion while form data is constructed, since this is how server expects values. So, I wrote a small recursive function which translates the JSON which is like this:

{
   "orderPrice":"11",
   "cardNumber":"************1234",
   "id":"8796191359018",
   "accountHolderName":"Raj Pawan",
   "expiryMonth":"02",
   "expiryYear":"2019",
   "issueNumber":null,
   "billingAddress":{
      "city":"Wonderland",
      "code":"8796682911767",
      "firstname":"Raj Pawan",
      "lastname":"Gumdal",
      "line1":"Addr Line 1",
      "line2":null,
      "state":"US-AS",
      "region":{
         "isocode":"US-AS"
      },
      "zip":"76767-6776"
   }
}

Into something like this:

{
   "orderPrice":"11",
   "cardNumber":"************1234",
   "id":"8796191359018",
   "accountHolderName":"Raj Pawan",
   "expiryMonth":"02",
   "expiryYear":"2019",
   "issueNumber":null,
   "billingAddress.city":"Wonderland",
   "billingAddress.code":"8796682911767",
   "billingAddress.firstname":"Raj Pawan",
   "billingAddress.lastname":"Gumdal",
   "billingAddress.line1":"Addr Line 1",
   "billingAddress.line2":null,
   "billingAddress.state":"US-AS",
   "billingAddress.region.isocode":"US-AS",
   "billingAddress.zip":"76767-6776"
}

The server would accept form data which is in this converted format.

Here is the function:

function jsonToFormData (inJSON, inTestJSON, inFormData, parentKey) {
    // http://stackoverflow.com/a/22783314/260665
    // Raj: Converts any nested JSON to formData.
    var form_data = inFormData || new FormData();
    var testJSON = inTestJSON || {};
    for ( var key in inJSON ) {
        // 1. If it is a recursion, then key has to be constructed like "parent.child" where parent JSON contains a child JSON
        // 2. Perform append data only if the value for key is not a JSON, recurse otherwise!
        var constructedKey = key;
        if (parentKey) {
            constructedKey = parentKey + "." + key;
        }

        var value = inJSON[key];
        if (value && value.constructor === {}.constructor) {
            // This is a JSON, we now need to recurse!
            jsonToFormData (value, testJSON, form_data, constructedKey);
        } else {
            form_data.append(constructedKey, inJSON[key]);
            testJSON[constructedKey] = inJSON[key];
        }
    }
    return form_data;
}

Invocation:

        var testJSON = {};
        var form_data = jsonToFormData (jsonForPost, testJSON);

I am using testJSON just to see the converted results since I would not be able to extract the contents of form_data. AJAX post call:

        $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: somePostURL,
            data: form_data,
            processData : false,
            contentType : false,
            success: function (data) {
            },
            error: function (e) {
            }
        });