How can I check that two objects have the same set of property names?
You can serialize simple data to check for equality:
data1 = {firstName: 'John', lastName: 'Smith'};
data2 = {firstName: 'Jane', lastName: 'Smith'};
JSON.stringify(data1) === JSON.stringify(data2)
This will give you something like
'{firstName:"John",lastName:"Smith"}' === '{firstName:"Jane",lastName:"Smith"}'
As a function...
function compare(a, b) {
return JSON.stringify(a) === JSON.stringify(b);
}
compare(data1, data2);
EDIT
If you're using chai like you say, check out http://chaijs.com/api/bdd/#equal-section
EDIT 2
If you just want to check keys...
function compareKeys(a, b) {
var aKeys = Object.keys(a).sort();
var bKeys = Object.keys(b).sort();
return JSON.stringify(aKeys) === JSON.stringify(bKeys);
}
should do it.
2 Here a short ES6 variadic version:
function objectsHaveSameKeys(...objects) {
const allKeys = objects.reduce((keys, object) => keys.concat(Object.keys(object)), []);
const union = new Set(allKeys);
return objects.every(object => union.size === Object.keys(object).length);
}
A little performance test (MacBook Pro - 2,8 GHz Intel Core i7, Node 5.5.0):
var x = {};
var y = {};
for (var i = 0; i < 5000000; ++i) {
x[i] = i;
y[i] = i;
}
Results:
objectsHaveSameKeys(x, y) // took 4996 milliseconds
compareKeys(x, y) // took 14880 milliseconds
hasSameProps(x,y) // after 10 minutes I stopped execution
If you want to check if both objects have the same properties name, you can do this:
function hasSameProps( obj1, obj2 ) {
return Object.keys( obj1 ).every( function( prop ) {
return obj2.hasOwnProperty( prop );
});
}
var obj1 = { prop1: 'hello', prop2: 'world', prop3: [1,2,3,4,5] },
obj2 = { prop1: 'hello', prop2: 'world', prop3: [1,2,3,4,5] };
console.log(hasSameProps(obj1, obj2));
In this way you are sure to check only iterable and accessible properties of both the objects.
EDIT - 2013.04.26:
The previous function can be rewritten in the following way:
function hasSameProps( obj1, obj2 ) {
var obj1Props = Object.keys( obj1 ),
obj2Props = Object.keys( obj2 );
if ( obj1Props.length == obj2Props.length ) {
return obj1Props.every( function( prop ) {
return obj2Props.indexOf( prop ) >= 0;
});
}
return false;
}
In this way we check that both the objects have the same number of properties (otherwise the objects haven't the same properties, and we must return a logical false) then, if the number matches, we go to check if they have the same properties.
Bonus
A possible enhancement could be to introduce also a type checking to enforce the match on every property.
If you want deep validation like @speculees, here's an answer using deep-keys
(disclosure: I'm sort of a maintainer of this small package)
// obj1 should have all of obj2's properties
var deepKeys = require('deep-keys');
var _ = require('underscore');
assert(0 === _.difference(deepKeys(obj2), deepKeys(obj1)).length);
// obj1 should have exactly obj2's properties
var deepKeys = require('deep-keys');
var _ = require('lodash');
assert(0 === _.xor(deepKeys(obj2), deepKeys(obj1)).length);
or with chai
:
var expect = require('chai').expect;
var deepKeys = require('deep-keys');
// obj1 should have all of obj2's properties
expect(deepKeys(obj1)).to.include.members(deepKeys(obj2));
// obj1 should have exactly obj2's properties
expect(deepKeys(obj1)).to.have.members(deepKeys(obj2));