Reading C# dictionary in Javascript

You read like this:

alert(Chats["Sam"]);

(so like a C# Dictionary :-). You read/write to it using something like Chats["propertyName"])

or, to go through each value:

for (var c in Chats){    if (Chats.hasOwnProperty(c))     {        alert(c + '   ' + Chats[c]);    }}

Note that this is different than C#. In C# c would contain a KeyValuePair<> containing both the key and the value. In Javascript c is only the key and to get the value you have to use Chats[c].

(the reasoning for hasOwnProperty is here http://yuiblog.com/blog/2006/09/26/for-in-intrigue/)

Now... If you really want to split it:

var array = [];for (var c in Chats){    if (Chats.hasOwnProperty(c))     {        array.push([c, Chats[c]]);    }}

Just add the data type json to your ajax request

$.ajax({ url: "TextChatCalls/getChat.aspx", type: "POST", dataType: "json" context: document.body, success: function (response) {          // do something with response });

This will make response a javascript object that you can access like this

alert(response["sam"]) //How are you?

to split that up into a 2d array just do this

var Chats = [];for ( k in response ){  Chats[Chats.length] = [k, response[k]];}

I guess the important point here is that you properly understand what is going on on the JavaScript client side. The datatype that arrives on the JavaScript client side is a JSON string. JSON (= JavaScript Object Notation) can directly be interpreted by JavaScript.

A JavaScript object looks as follows:

var anObject = { name: "Sam", surname: "abc"};

You can access the properties of a JavaScript object either through a somewhat Dictionary-similar way like

anObject["name"] //will get "Sam"

or directly (property notation)

anObject.name

Instead a similar JSON string would look like

var aJsonString = '{ "name": "Sam", "surname": "abc"}'

Now to convert the JSON string to a JavaScript object you need to parse it. jQuery does this already for you, otherwise you can invoke JSON.parse(aJsonString) and you'll get a valid JavaScript object.

Here I did a quick example: http://jsbin.com/adejev/2/edit