Using string as variable name in JS?

Question

How can I make the code that follows to work?

var x = 'name';

and then, to use the value inside x, as it was a variable, and set it, so that if i want it to be NAME, i'll have the result:

var name = 'NAME';

Is it possible ?

Also resembles http://stackoverflow.com/questions/16985132/parse-a-string-as-an-object-from-data-attribute & http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6491463/accessing-nested-javascript-objects-with-string-key (retrieving objects and variables my string). — Brad Christie, Jun 24 '13 at 15:12

score 10 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 24 '13 at 15:11

Not directly, no. But, you can assign to window, which assigns it as a globally accessible variable :

var name = 'abc';
window[name] = 'something';
alert(abc);

However, a much better solution is to use your own object to handle this:

var name = 'abc';
var my_object = {};
my_object[name] = 'something';
alert(my_object[name]);

score 5 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 24 '13 at 15:13

I haven't seen the rest of your code, but a better way might be to use an object.

var data = {foo: "bar"};
var x = "foo";
data[x]; //=> bar

var y = "hello";
data[y] = "panda";
data["hello"]; //=> panda

I think this is a little cleaner and self-contained than the window approach

2 Answers2