sorted-object

What is sorted-object?

The sorted-object npm package is a utility that allows you to sort the keys of an object in a consistent order. This can be particularly useful for tasks such as generating consistent JSON outputs, comparing objects, or ensuring predictable key order in serialized data.

What are sorted-object's main functionalities?

Sort Object Keys

This feature sorts the keys of an object in ascending order. The code sample demonstrates how to use the sorted-object package to sort the keys of a given object.

const sortedObject = require('sorted-object');
const obj = { b: 2, a: 1, c: 3 };
const sorted = sortedObject(obj);
console.log(sorted); // { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 }

Other packages similar to sorted-object

sort-keys

The sort-keys package sorts the keys of an object in a consistent order, similar to sorted-object. It offers additional options such as sorting in descending order and customizing the sort function. This package provides more flexibility compared to sorted-object.

deep-sort-object

The deep-sort-object package sorts the keys of an object recursively, ensuring that nested objects are also sorted. This is useful for deep comparisons and consistent serialization of complex objects. It offers more comprehensive sorting capabilities compared to sorted-object.

README

Get a Version of an Object with Sorted Keys

Although objects in JavaScript are theoretically unsorted, in practice most engines use insertion order—at least, ignoring numeric keys. This manifests itself most prominently when dealing with an object's JSON serialization.

So, for example, you might be trying to serialize some object to a JSON file. But every time you write it, it ends up being output in a different order, depending on how you created it in the first place! This makes for some ugly diffs.

sorted-object gives you the answer. Just use this package to create a version of your object with its keys sorted before serializing, and you'll get a consistent order every time.

var sortedObject = require("sorted-object");

var objectToSerialize = generateStuffNondeterministically();

// Before:
fs.writeFileSync("dest.json", JSON.stringify(objectToSerialize));

// After:
var sortedVersion = sortedObject(objectToSerialize);
fs.writeFileSync("dest.json", JSON.stringify(sortedVersion));