Accessing Data in JSON [Nodejs] - json

Question

I have some JSON that when converted to an Object it looks like the following:
{
'SOME RANDOM STRING':
{
'Article Headline': 'headline',
'Article Image URL': 'image url',
'Article Published Date': 'date',
'Article URL': 'article url',
'Category': 'mental illness,',
'Location': 'place',
'Source Name': 'source'
}
}
I have it stored in an array called results. How would I be able to access the values within Location as result.location doesn't work.

Answer 1

If its a JSON, you don't have to convert it into an array. You can parse it directly something like below.
var obj = {
'-KzZaDXhWRwdzfKUf5tl':
{ 'Article Headline': 'headline',
'Article Image URL': 'image url',
'Article Published Date': 'date',
'Article URL': 'article url',
'Category': 'mental illness,',
'Location': 'place',
'Source Name': 'source' }
}
console.log(obj['-KzZaDXhWRwdzfKUf5tl'].Location);
The above prints place to the screen.

Answer 2

The path to the Object would be results[0]['RANDOM STRING'].location, however since you don't know the RANDOM STRING then it'd be best to use non referential methods to access the nested object.
Thankfully there are many tools in recent version of NodeJS/Javascript to do just this!
Array.prototype.map(function(item, index, array), context) seems like the function you want! It will create a new array based on the return of the function as applied to each thing in the array.
Then you can change each object by using other tools built onto the object itself like
// array of keys, useful for looking for a specific key
Object.keys(someReallyObtuseObject)
// array of VALUES! Awesome for looking for a specific data type
Object.values(someReallyObtuseObject)
Checking Node Green for Object.values shows it's available in NodeJS 7.10 or greater and for Object.keys shows it is available as far back as 4.8.6!
Don't forget though that these transform the object to an array. After that you can use forEach, filter, map, and many other array methods to access the data!
An Example
Say I have an array from a database called results
const results = [{...},{...},...];
I want to find a result with the identifier I know
// I will either find the result, or receive undefined
let result = results.filter(r => r[key] == identifier)[0];
However in my result the object has a key called "related posts" and it is an object with a key being a unique ID for each related post. I want to access said posts, but I don't know their unique IDs, so I want to convert it to an array to make processing it easier
// This gives me an array of related posts with their ID now nested inside them
let relatedPosts = Object.keys(result['related posts']).map(k => {
let r = result['related posts'][k];
r.id = k;
return r;
});
Now I can go over my related posts easily, and I never had to know the ID of the post. Let's say I want to console.log each post(you would really never want to do this)
relatedPosts.forEach(console.log);
Easy!
Example 2, getting the location from an array of users
Users are defined as an object with keys 'first', 'last', 'location'
const users = [{...},{...},...]
let locations = users.map(user => user.location)