jquery - Recursively Search in JSON or Javascript Object

Question

For example:

[{
    id:'our-purpose',
    title:'Our Purpose',
    slug:'/our-purpose',
    backgroundImage:'images/bg-our-purpose.jpg',
    showInNav:1
  },
  {
    id:'our-people',
    title:'Our People',
    slug:'/our-people',
    backgroundImage:'images/bg-our-people.jpg',
    showInNav:1,
    subpages:[
      {
        id:'attorneys',
        title:'Attorneys',
        slug:'/our-people/attorneys',
        subpages:[
          {
            id:'attorneys-cdb',
            title:'Attorneys - Carla DeLoach Bryant',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/carla'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-jad',
            title:'Attorneys - Jordan A. DeLoach',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/jordan'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-shh',
            title:'Attorneys - Sarah H. Hayford',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/sarah'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-jsp',
            title:'Attorneys - Jason S. Palmisano',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/jason'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-ldw',
            title:'Attorneys - Lindsey DeLoach Wagner',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/carla'
          },
        ]
      },
      {
        id:'legal-support',
        title:'Legal Support',
        slug:'/our-people/legal-support',
        subpages:[
          {
            id:'legal-support-tb',
            title:'Legal Support - Theolyn Brock',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/theolyn'
          },
          {
            id:'legal-support-cd',
            title:'Legal Support - Cheri DeFries',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/cheri'
          },
        ]
      },
 //...and so on

You'll notice that you could do json[1].subpages[0].subpages[0] but I don't know how deep it's going to be. This is written by a designer client of mine for an AJAX site he's building for a client. I'm trying to generate a navigation amongst other things and need to be able to:

A. Parse this recursively to build a navigation (<ul><li><a>...)

B. Search for a matching id. Like this (but this isn't recursive)[and ignore the for...in, its just for example's sake)

var matchId(id,json){
  for(x in json){
    if(json[x].id == id){ var theMatch = json[x]; break; }
  }
}

Answer 1

This code builds the nav for you:

function buildNavForNode(node) {
  var result = "<li id='" + node.id + "'><a href='" + node.slug + "'>" + node.title + "</a>";
  if(node.subpages == undefined) {
    return result + "</li>";
  } else {
    return result + buildNavForNodes(node.subpages) + "</li>";
  }
}


function buildNavForNodes(nodes) {
  var result = "<ul>";
  var i = 0;
  var len = nodes.length;
  for(; i < len; i++) {
    result += buildNavForNode(nodes[i]);
  }
  return result + "</ul>";
}

Here's how you'd use it:

var testData = [
  {
    id:'our-purpose',
    title:'Our Purpose',
    slug:'/our-purpose',
    backgroundImage:'images/bg-our-purpose.jpg',
    showInNav:1
  },
  {
    id:'our-people',
    title:'Our People',
    slug:'/our-people',
    backgroundImage:'images/bg-our-people.jpg',
    showInNav:1,
    subpages:[
      {
        id:'attorneys',
        title:'Attorneys',
        slug:'/our-people/attorneys',
        subpages:[
          {
            id:'attorneys-cdb',
            title:'Attorneys - Carla DeLoach Bryant',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/carla'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-jad',
            title:'Attorneys - Jordan A. DeLoach',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/jordan'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-shh',
            title:'Attorneys - Sarah H. Hayford',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/sarah'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-jsp',
            title:'Attorneys - Jason S. Palmisano',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/jason'
          },
          {
            id:'attorneys-ldw',
            title:'Attorneys - Lindsey DeLoach Wagner',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/carla'
          },
        ]
      },
      {
        id:'legal-support',
        title:'Legal Support',
        slug:'/our-people/legal-support',
        subpages:[
          {
            id:'legal-support-tb',
            title:'Legal Support - Theolyn Brock',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/theolyn'
          },
          {
            id:'legal-support-cd',
            title:'Legal Support - Cheri DeFries',
            slug:'/our-people/attorneys/cheri'
          },
        ]
      }
    ]
  }
];

$(function(){
  htmlToInsert = buildNavForNodes(testData);
  console.log(htmlToInsert);
  $('body').html(htmlToInsert);
});

You can do this quite readily with a recursive function, but I think this nicely delineates the separation of duties between figuring out what to do with a collection of pages and processing a single page itself.