JavaScripting

Search inside JavaScript objects

The command line has grep, so why doesn't JavaScript?

If you work with big objects (such as those in client-side MVC libraries) you might wonder where certain properties end up living on your JS objects. Wouldn't it be nice to just grep the objects to find strings you know are in there somewhere?

Usage

Run this bookmarklet.

javascript:(function%20()%20%7Bvar%20script%20=%20document.createElement(%22script%22);script.src%20=%20%22https://raw.github.com/begriffs/objgrep/master/objgrep.js%22;document.getElementsByTagName(%22head%22)[0].appendChild(script);%7D());

It adds a .grep method to every object which you can use in the Chrome console. For example let's define a foo object.

var foo = { beamish: 'thought', outgrabe: 10, toves: ['thou', 'borogoves', 'wabe'] };

After running the bookmarklet, you can grep the object:

foo.grep(/abe/);
// returns [".outgrabe", ".toves[2]"]

foo.grep(/\d+/);
// returns [".outgrabe", ".toves[0]", ".toves[1]", ".toves[2]"]

Options

name	description	default value
depth	Limit the search depth	5
dom	Search dom nodes too	true
keys	Search in object keys	true

Pass options as a hash in the second argument. For instance,

// searches with depth at most two
foo.grep(/abe/, {depth: 2});
// returns [".outgrabe"]

Caveats

• Clicking the bookmarklet when the debugger is paused in chrome will continue script execution. Load objgrep in development (via <script> tags) or click the bookmarklet before hitting a breakpoint to work around this.

License

Objgrep is Copyright © 2013 Joe Nelson. It is free software, and may be redistributed under the terms specified in the LICENSE file.