I have the following array in my source code:
var employees = [ { "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"another answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 2", "Answer":"answer 2" } ]; I need to create a function that can group all the answers that are related to the same question and put the info in a JSON object
{ "Question":"question 1", "Answer" : '[{"answer 1","another answer 1"}]' }, { "Question":"question 2", "Answer" : '[{"answer2"}]' } This line has many problems
'[{"answer 1","another answer 1"}]' First, since it's inside quotes, it's a string, not an object. Second, you have an invalid object inside of an array.
If I understood you correctly, you're looking for something along the lines of
employee[x].answers = ['answer1','answer2']; As said in comments, you wrote your answers as strings not as an array of strings.
What you may want to acheive is this :
var employees = [ { "question":"question 1", "answers": ["answer 1"] }, { "question":"question 2", "answers": ["answer 2", "some other answer", "... etc"] } ]; // add answers to question 1 employees[0].answers.push('a new anwser 1'); // add anwers to question 2 employees[1].answers.push('a new answer 2'); // ... and so on that's how i see it if you want a clean way to add answers and have your answers related to your questions directly
Now the function for this would be :
var employees = [ { "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"another answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 2", "Answer":"answer 2" } ]; function groupAnswersToQuestions(employees){ var questions = [], result = []; // set all questions with same string to the same key for(var k in employees){ // set the question to an array if not set yet var q = employees[k].Question; if( ! questions[q]) questions[q] = []; // add the answer to the array questions[q].push(employees[k].Answer); } // re render a new array with the wanted structure for(var k2 in questions){ result.push({ question: k2, answers: questions[k2] }); } return result; } alert( JSON.stringify( groupAnswersToQuestions(employees), null, 2) );You can try this. call this function and pass the employees array to this and it will return your modified array
function customJSON(employees){ var newEmp = [],tmp = 0; for(var i=0; i<employees.length; i++){ if(employees[i]){ if(newEmp.indexOf(employees[i].Question)>-1){ employees[newEmp.indexOf(employees[i].Question)].Answer.push(employees[i].Answer); employees.splice(i,1); --i; }else{ newEmp.push(employees[i].Question); tmp = employees[i].Answer; employees[i].Answer = [tmp]; } } } return employees; } 
var employees = [ { "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"another answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 2", "Answer":"answer 2" }]; var employeesNewDataFormat = []; for(var i=0; i<employees.length; i++){ var hasEntry = false; var index = -1; for(var j=0; j<employeesNewDataFormat.length; j++) { if(employeesNewDataFormat[j].Question === employees[i].Question) { hasEntry = true; index = j; break; } } if(hasEntry) { employeesNewDataFormat[index].Answer.push(employees[i].Answer); } else { employeesNewDataFormat.push({"Question":employees[i].Question, "Answer":[employees[i].Answer]}); } } console.log(JSON.stringify(employeesNewDataFormat));You can use a map to keep track of the questions and add answers to the array attached to it:
var employees = [{ "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 1", "Answer":"another answer 1" }, { "Question":"question 2", "Answer":"answer 2" }]; var questions = {}; for (var i = 0; i < employees.length; i++) { if (questions[employees[i].Question] === undefined) { questions[employees[i].Question] = []; } questions[employees[i].Question].push(employees[i].Answer) } alert(JSON.stringify(questions, null, 2))assuming that, like everyone is saying, you don't really mean what you wrote, but what we all understood, my advice for this case is using underscore, it has the perfect requirements for this case, your code would be:
var result = _.chain(employees) .groupBy('Question') .map(function(value, key) { return { Question: key, Answer: _.pluck(value, 'Answer') } }) .value(); 
This is a bit crude and verbose but it does what I think you are asking for:
var questions = {}; for (var i = employees.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) { var Question = ''; for (var property in employees[i]) { // console.log(property); var val = employees[i][property]; if (property == "Question") { Question = val; if (typeof questions[Question] == 'undefined') { questions[Question] = []; }; } if(property == 'Answer') { questions[Question].push(val); } }; }; var new_employees = []; for (var Question in questions) { var obj = { "Question": Question, "Answer": questions[Question] } new_employees.push(obj); }; console.log(new_employees); 
