How to convert jQuery.serialize() data to JSON object?

Solution 1:

var formdata = $("#myform").serializeArray();
var data = {};
$(formdata ).each(function(index, obj){
    data[obj.name] = obj.value;
});

Simple and fast ;)

Solution 2:

I have recently had this exact problem. Initially, we were using jQuery's serializeArray() method, but that does not include form elements that are disabled. We will often disable form elements that are "sync'd" to other sources on the page, but we still need to include the data in our serialized object. So serializeArray() is out. We used the :input selector to get all input elements (both enabled and disabled) in a given container, and then $.map() to create our object.

var inputs = $("#container :input");
var obj = $.map(inputs, function(n, i)
{
    var o = {};
    o[n.name] = $(n).val();
    return o;
});
console.log(obj);

Note that for this to work, each of your inputs will need a name attribute, which will be the name of the property of the resulting object.

That is actually slightly modified from what we used. We needed to create an object that was structured as a .NET IDictionary, so we used this: (I provide it here in case it's useful)

var obj = $.map(inputs, function(n, i)
{
    return { Key: n.name, Value: $(n).val() };
});
console.log(obj);

I like both of these solutions, because they are simple uses of the $.map() function, and you have complete control over your selector (so, which elements you end up including in your resulting object). Also, no extra plugin required. Plain old jQuery.

Solution 3:

Use the jQuery.serializeJSON plugin. It converts forms using the same format as what you would find in a Rails params object, which is very standard and well tested.

Solution 4:

I'm using this very little jQuery plugin, that I've extended from DocumentCloud:

https://github.com/documentcloud/documentcloud/blob/master/public/javascripts/lib/jquery_extensions.js

It is basically two lines of code, but it requires _.js (Underscore.js), since it is based on a reduce function.

$.fn.extend({
  serializeJSON: function(exclude) {
    exclude || (exclude = []);
    return _.reduce(this.serializeArray(), function(hash, pair) {
      pair.value && !(pair.name in exclude) && (hash[pair.name] = pair.value);
      return hash;
    }, {});
  }
});

Extensions:

It doesn't serialize an input value if it's null
It can exclude some inputs by passing an array of input names to the exclude argument i.e. ["password_confirm"]

Solution 5:

I think there're a lot of good answer here, and I made my own function based on these answers.

function formToJSON(f) {
    var fd = $(f).serializeArray();
    var d = {};
    $(fd).each(function() {
        if (d[this.name] !== undefined){
            if (!Array.isArray(d[this.name])) {
                d[this.name] = [d[this.name]];
            }
            d[this.name].push(this.value);
        }else{
            d[this.name] = this.value;
        }
    });
    return d;
}

//The way to use it :
$('#myForm').submit(function(){
    var datas = formToJSON(this);
    return false;
});

Well let me explain basically why I prefer this solution... If you have multiples input with the same name, all values will be stored in an Array but if not, the value will be stored directly as the value of the index in the JSON ... This is where it's different from Danilo Colasso's answer where the JSON returned is only based of array values...

So if you have a Form with a textarea named content and multiples authors, this function will return to you :

{
    content : 'This is The Content',
    authors : 
        [
            0: 'me',
            1: 'you',
            2: 'him',
        ]
}