jquery.jpath.js

Author	Copyright (c) 2008 Maxime Haineault (haineault.com)
License	MIT License

Inspired by xPath and jQuery selectors, jPath is an experimental plugin to allow easy browsing of JavaScript object, namely JSON objects. The goal is make it easy to pull/compare/search data from these object. Here's a simple example of how it's supposed to work.

Example

// .. some ajax call get a JSON object called "res"

// the conventional way to digg for data
if (res && res.employee && res.employee.name == 'Max') {
    alert(res.employee.name);
}

// with jpath
if ($(res).jpath('employee.name:is(Max)')) {
    alert($(res).jpath('employee.name');
}

Furthermore, in the above example the conventional way assume that employee.name is defined. But if the server returns a JSON object and the name isn't defined the script will throw an error. jPath will simply return false if either employee or name isn't defined, making it a bit more reliable.

Basic usage

var obj = {
    a: {
        b: 'yay', 
        c:[1,2,3]
    }
}

$(obj).jpath('a.b');           // return "yay" 
$(obj).jpath('a.b:match(ya)'); // return "true"
$(obj).jpath('a.c');           // returns [1,2,3]
$(obj).jpath('a.c:eq(2)');     // returns "3"

$.jpath.expr

expr	description
:contains(value)	Returns true if the object's contains value
:first	Returns the first element of an object
:last	Returns the last element of an object
:eq(N)	Returns the Nth element of an array or the N proprety of an array
:is(str)	Returns true if the object's value == str
:match(str)	Returns true if the object's value match str