asarray

Convert array-like objects to arrays

Have an array-like object, with a length property and integer properties 0 to length - 1, but you want to use real array methods on it? Now you can:

var asarray = require('asarray');

var arr = asarray(obj);

and then Array.isArray(arr) is true, native methods like arr.forEach() (if available on your platform) can be used, and so on. Effectively, asarray converts from an implicit interface to a real array (reification?).

An example use case is iterating over a FileList from the W3C File API or other array-like DOM elements using forEach or other useful array methods. Since FileList is not an array these methods cannot normally be used directly.

Performance note: this module uses new Array(length) then sets each index (initializing the array with [] then adding each element with .push() would be 20-70% slower). Also note, a new array is created and copied; for large array-like objects this module may not be the best solution.

(Note this module should not to be confused with toarray, which although also very useful, has a completely different purpose.)

License

MIT