im trying to turn a string into a variable name
In Javascript, you don't usually dynamically define new variables with custom names in the current scope. While you can do it at the global scope, you cannot easily do it in the function or block scope without using tools that are generally not recommended (like eval()
).
Instead, you use an object and you create properties on that object. You can use either a regular object and regular properties or you can use a Map object with some additional features.
For a regular object, you can do thing like this:
// define base object
let base = {};
// define two variables that contain variable name and value
let someName = "greeting";
let someValue = "hello";
// store those as a property on our base object
base[someName] = someValue;
console.log(base); // {greeting: "hello"}
Then, you can change the value:
someValue = "goodbye";
base[someName] = someValue;
console.log(base); // {greeting: "goodbye"}
Or, you can add another one:
let someOtherName = "salutation";
let someOtherValue = "Dear Mr. Green";
base[someOtherName] = someOtherValue;
console.log(base); // {greeting: "goodbye", salutation: "Dear Mr. Green"}
console.log(base.greeting) // "goodbye"
console.log(base[someName]); // "goodbye"
console.log(base.salutation) // "Dear Mr. Green"
console.log(Object.keys(base)) // ["greeting", "salutation"]
You can think of the Javascript object as a set of key/value pairs. The "key" is the property name and the value is the value. You can get an array of the keys with:
Object.keys(obj)
You set a key/value pair with:
obj[key] = value;
You get the value for a key with:
console.log(obj[key]);
You remove a key/value pair with:
delete obj[key]
With a plain Javascript object like this, the keys must all be strings (or easily converted to a string).
If you have non-string keys, you can use a Map
object as it will take any object or primitive value as a key, but it uses get()
and set()
methods to set and get key/values rather than the assignment scheme of a plain object.