Recursively looping through an object to build a property list

I made a FIDDLE for you. I am storing a stack string and then output it, if the property is of primitive type:

function iterate(obj, stack) {
        for (var property in obj) {
            if (obj.hasOwnProperty(property)) {
                if (typeof obj[property] == "object") {
                    iterate(obj[property], stack + '.' + property);
                } else {
                    console.log(property + "   " + obj[property]);
                    $('#output').append($("<div/>").text(stack + '.' + property))
                }
            }
        }
    }

iterate(object, '')

UPDATE (17/01/2019) - <There used to be a different implementation, but it didn't work. See this answer for a prettier solution :)>


The solution from Artyom Neustroev does not work on complex objects, so here is a working solution based on his idea:

function propertiesToArray(obj) {
  const isObject = val =>
    val && typeof val === 'object' && !Array.isArray(val);

  const addDelimiter = (a, b) =>
    a ? `${a}.${b}` : b;

  const paths = (obj = {}, head = '') => {
    return Object.entries(obj)
      .reduce((product, [key, value]) => 
        {
          let fullPath = addDelimiter(head, key)
          return isObject(value) ?
            product.concat(paths(value, fullPath))
          : product.concat(fullPath)
        }, []);
  }

  return paths(obj);
}
  
const foo = {foo: {bar: {baz: undefined}, fub: 'goz', bag: {zar: {zaz: null}, raz: 3}}}
const result = propertiesToArray(foo)
console.log(result)

You'll run into issues with this if the object has loop in its object graph, e.g something like:

var object = {
    aProperty: {
        aSetting1: 1
    },
};
object.ref = object;

In that case you might want to keep references of objects you've already walked through & exclude them from the iteration.

Also you can run into an issue if the object graph is too deep like:

var object = {
  a: { b: { c: { ... }} }
};

You'll get too many recursive calls error. Both can be avoided:

function iterate(obj) {
    var walked = [];
    var stack = [{obj: obj, stack: ''}];
    while(stack.length > 0)
    {
        var item = stack.pop();
        var obj = item.obj;
        for (var property in obj) {
            if (obj.hasOwnProperty(property)) {
                if (typeof obj[property] == "object") {
                  var alreadyFound = false;
                  for(var i = 0; i < walked.length; i++)
                  {
                    if (walked[i] === obj[property])
                    {
                      alreadyFound = true;
                      break;
                    }
                  }
                  if (!alreadyFound)
                  {
                    walked.push(obj[property]);
                    stack.push({obj: obj[property], stack: item.stack + '.' + property});
                  }
                }
                else
                {
                    console.log(item.stack + '.' + property + "=" + obj[property]);
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

iterate(object);