How to access the first property of a Javascript object?

Question

Is there an elegant way to access the first property of an object...

1. where you don\'t know the name of your properties
2. without using a loop like

Answer 1

I don't recommend you to use Object.keys since its not supported in old IE versions. But if you really need that, you could use the code above to guarantee the back compatibility:

if (!Object.keys) {
Object.keys = (function () {
var hasOwnProperty = Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty,
    hasDontEnumBug = !({toString: null}).propertyIsEnumerable('toString'),
    dontEnums = [
      'toString',
      'toLocaleString',
      'valueOf',
      'hasOwnProperty',
      'isPrototypeOf',
      'propertyIsEnumerable',
      'constructor'
    ],
    dontEnumsLength = dontEnums.length;

return function (obj) {
  if (typeof obj !== 'object' && typeof obj !== 'function' || obj === null) throw new TypeError('Object.keys called on non-object');

  var result = [];

  for (var prop in obj) {
    if (hasOwnProperty.call(obj, prop)) result.push(prop);
  }

  if (hasDontEnumBug) {
    for (var i=0; i < dontEnumsLength; i++) {
      if (hasOwnProperty.call(obj, dontEnums[i])) result.push(dontEnums[i]);
    }
  }
  return result;
}})()};

Feature Firefox (Gecko)4 (2.0) Chrome 5 Internet Explorer 9 Opera 12 Safari 5

More info: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Object/keys

But if you only need the first one, we could arrange a shorter solution like:

var data = {"key1":"123","key2":"456"};
var first = {};
for(key in data){
    if(data.hasOwnProperty(key)){
        first.key = key;
        first.content =  data[key];
        break;
    }
}
console.log(first); // {key:"key",content:"123"}