Find property by name in a deep object

I have a HUGE collection and I am looking for a property by key someplace inside the collection. What is a reliable way to get a list of references or full paths to all objects containing that key/index? I use jQuery and lodash if it helps and you can forget about infinite pointer recursion, this is a pure JSON response.

fn({ 'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': {'d':{'e':7}}}, "d"); 
// [o.c]

fn({ 'a': 1, 'b': 2, 'c': {'d':{'e':7}}}, "e");
// [o.c.d]

fn({ 'aa': 1, 'bb': 2, 'cc': {'d':{'x':9}}, dd:{'d':{'y':9}}}, 'd');
// [o.cc,o.cc.dd]

fwiw lodash has a _.find function that will find nested objects that are two nests deep, but it seems to fail after that. (e.g. http://codepen.io/anon/pen/bnqyh)

This should do it:

function fn(obj, key) {
    if (_.has(obj, key)) // or just (key in obj)
        return [obj];
    // elegant:
    return _.flatten(_.map(obj, function(v) {
        return typeof v == "object" ? fn(v, key) : [];
    }), true);

    // or efficient:
    var res = [];
    _.forEach(obj, function(v) {
        if (typeof v == "object" && (v = fn(v, key)).length)
            res.push.apply(res, v);
    });
    return res;
}

a pure JavaScript solution would look like the following:

function findNested(obj, key, memo) {
  var i,
      proto = Object.prototype,
      ts = proto.toString,
      hasOwn = proto.hasOwnProperty.bind(obj);

  if ('[object Array]' !== ts.call(memo)) memo = [];

  for (i in obj) {
    if (hasOwn(i)) {
      if (i === key) {
        memo.push(obj[i]);
      } else if ('[object Array]' === ts.call(obj[i]) || '[object Object]' === ts.call(obj[i])) {
        findNested(obj[i], key, memo);
      }
    }
  }

  return memo;
}

here's how you'd use this function:

findNested({'aa': 1, 'bb': 2, 'cc': {'d':{'x':9}}, dd:{'d':{'y':9}}}, 'd');

and the result would be:

[{x: 9}, {y: 9}]

this will deep search an array of objects (hay) for a value (needle) then return an array with the results...

search = function(hay, needle, accumulator) {
  var accumulator = accumulator || [];
  if (typeof hay == 'object') {
    for (var i in hay) {
      search(hay[i], needle, accumulator) == true ? accumulator.push(hay) : 1;
    }
  }
  return new RegExp(needle).test(hay) || accumulator;
}

If you can write a recursive function in plain JS (or with combination of lodash) that will be the best one (by performance), but if you want skip recursion from your side and want to go for a simple readable code (which may not be best as per performance) then you can use lodash#cloneDeepWith for any purposes where you have to traverse a object recursively.

let findValuesDeepByKey = (obj, key, res = []) => (
    _.cloneDeepWith(obj, (v,k) => {k==key && res.push(v)}) && res
)

So, the callback you passes as the 2nd argument of _.cloneDeepWith will recursively traverse all the key/value pairs recursively and all you have to do is the operation you want to do with each. the above code is just a example of your case. Here is a working example:

var object = {
    prop1: 'ABC1',
    prop2: 'ABC2',
    prop3: {
        prop4: 'ABC3',
        prop5Arr: [{
                prop5: 'XYZ'
            },
            {
                prop5: 'ABC4'
            },
            {
                prop6: {
                    prop6NestedArr: [{
                            prop1: 'XYZ Nested Arr'
                        },
                        {
                            propFurtherNested: {key100: '100 Value'}
                        }
                    ]
                }
            }
        ]
    }
}
let findValuesDeepByKey = (obj, key, res = []) => (
    _.cloneDeepWith(obj, (v,k) => {k==key && res.push(v)}) && res
)

console.log(findValuesDeepByKey(object, 'prop1'));
console.log(findValuesDeepByKey(object, 'prop5'));
console.log(findValuesDeepByKey(object, 'key100'));

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.10/lodash.min.js"></script>