How to sort a Javascript object, or convert it to an array?

Array.prototype.slice.call(arrayLikeObject)

is the standard way to convert and an array-like object to an array.

That only really works for the arguments object. To convert a generic object to an array is a bit of a pain. Here's the source from underscore.js:

_.toArray = function(iterable) {    if (!iterable)                return [];    if (iterable.toArray)         return iterable.toArray();    if (_.isArray(iterable))      return iterable;    if (_.isArguments(iterable))  return slice.call(iterable);    return _.values(iterable);};_.values = function(obj) {    return _.map(obj, _.identity);};

Turns out you're going to need to loop over your object and map it to an array yourself.

var newArray = []for (var key in object) {    newArray.push(key);}

You're confusing the concepts of arrays and "associative arrays". In JavaScript, objects kind of act like an associative array since you can access data in the format object["key"]. They're not real associative arrays since objects are unordered lists.

Objects and arrays are vastly different.

An example of using underscore:

var sortedObject = _.sortBy(object, function(val, key, object) {    // return an number to index it by. then it is sorted from smallest to largest number    return val;});

See live example

You should be able to convert a JavaScript object into an array like so...

var obj = {    '1': 'a',    '2': 'b',    '3': 'c'  };var arr = [];for (var key in obj) {    if (obj.hasOwnProperty(key)) {      arr.push(obj[key]);      }}console.log(arr); // ["a", "b", "c"]

See it on jsFiddle.

If your JavaScript object is an array-like object, that is, an Object instance with a valid numerical length property, then you can directly use many native Array methods on it thanks to the call method. For example:

// Sorts the given objet in-place as if it was an arrayArray.prototype.sort.call(yourObject);

So if you know the number of entries to be sorted (How to efficiently count the number of keys/properties of an object in JavaScript?), you can do:

yourObject.length = theNumberOfEntries;Array.prototype.sort.call(yourObject);// Optionally: delete yourObject.length;

Note that this will only sort properties indexed by "0", "1", "2", ... to length - 1 inclusive, like in an Array. The object's other properties will not be re-ordered.