Javascript reflection: Get nested objects path

Question

In this stackoverflow thread, i learnt you can get a object path via a simple string.

Accessing nested JavaScript objects with string key

consider the follow

Answer 1

Just use recursion to walk the object.

var person = {
    name: "somename",
    personal: {
        weight: "150",
        color: "dark",
        foo: {
            bar: 'bar',
            baz: 'baz'
        },
        empty: {
        }
    }
};

// however you want to do this
var isobject = function(x){
    return Object.prototype.toString.call(x) === '[object Object]';
};

var getkeys = function(obj, prefix){
    var keys = Object.keys(obj);
    prefix = prefix ? prefix + '.' : '';
    return keys.reduce(function(result, key){
        if(isobject(obj[key])){
            result = result.concat(getkeys(obj[key], prefix + key));
        }else{
            result.push(prefix + key);
        }
        return result;
    }, []);
};

var keys = getkeys(person);

document.body.innerHTML = '
' + JSON.stringify(keys) + '
';

Then use Array.prototype.map to massage the array of keys into your preferred format. Note the behaviour with person.personal.empty.

This does seem like a strange way to store an object's keys. I wonder what your 'further use for it down the road' is.