I think that the best way of doing this, as Douglas Crockford (one of the biggests gurus of JavaScript) suggests in here is using the JSON native parser, as it is not only faster than the eval(), it's also more secure.

Native JSON parser is already available in:

• Firefox 3.5+
• IE 8+
• Opera 10.5+
• Safari Safari 4.0.3+
• Chrome (don't know which version)

And Crockford has made a safe fallback in javascript, called json2.js, which is an adaption of the eval() approach, with some security bits added and with the native JSON parsers API. You just need to include that file, remove its first line, and use the native JSON parser, and if it's not present json2 would do the work.

Here is an example:

var myJSONString = '{ "a": 1, "b": 2 }',
    myObject = JSON.parse(myJSONString);

Once parsed you'll get an object with attributes a and b, and as you may know, you can treat an object as a hash table or associative array in JavaScript, so you would be able to access the values like this:

myObject['a'];

If you just want a simple array and not an associative one you could do something like:

var myArray = [];
for(var i in myObject) {
    myArray.push(myObject[i]);
}

Lastly, although not necessary in plain JavaScript, the JSON spec requires double quoting the key of the members. So the navite parser won't work without it. If I were you I would add it, but if it is not possible use the var myObject = eval( "(" + myString + ")" ); approach.

I would recommend using JSON.stringify, which converts the set of the variables in the object to a JSON string.

var obj = {
  name: 'myObj'
};

JSON.stringify(obj);

Most modern browsers support this method natively, but for those that don't, you can include a JS version.

Super simple Array.prototype.map() job

names.map(name => ({ name }))

That is... map each entry (name) to an object with key "name" and value name.

var names = [
    "Bob",
    "Michael",
    "Lanny"
];

console.info(names.map(name => ({ name })))

Silly me, I forgot the most important part

names.map(name => name === 'Bob' ? 'Saab' : name)
     .map(name => ({ name }))

If your array of objects is items, you can do:

var items = [{
  id: 1,
  name: 'john'
}, {
  id: 2,
  name: 'jane'
}, {
  id: 2000,
  name: 'zack'
}];

var names = items.map(function(item) {
  return item['name'];
});

console.log(names);
console.log(items);

Documentation: map()

Actually, the best solution is using JSON:

Documentation

JSON.parse(text[, reviver]);

Examples:

1)

var myobj = JSON.parse('{ "hello":"world" }');
alert(myobj.hello); // 'world'

2)

var myobj = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify({
    hello: "world"
});
alert(myobj.hello); // 'world'

3) Passing a function to JSON

var obj = {
    hello: "World",
    sayHello: (function() {
        console.log("I say Hello!");
    }).toString()
};
var myobj = JSON.parse(JSON.stringify(obj));
myobj.sayHello = new Function("return ("+myobj.sayHello+")")();
myobj.sayHello();