ZetCode

Looping over JSON array in JavaScript

last modified October 18, 2023

In this article we show how to loop over a JSON array in JavaScript.

The json-server is a JavaScript library to create testing REST API.

First, we create a project directory an install the json-server module.

$ mkdir jsonforeach
$ cd jsonforeach
$ npm init -y
$ npm i -g json-server

The JSON server module is installed globally with npm.

JSON test data

We have some JSON test data:

users.json
{
  "users": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "first_name": "Robert",
      "last_name": "Schwartz",
      "email": "rob23@gmail.com"
    },
    {
      "id": 2,
      "first_name": "Lucy",
      "last_name": "Ballmer",
      "email": "lucyb56@gmail.com"
    },
    {
      "id": 3,
      "first_name": "Anna",
      "last_name": "Smith",
      "email": "annasmith23@gmail.com"
    },
    {
      "id": 4,
      "first_name": "Robert",
      "last_name": "Brown",
      "email": "bobbrown432@yahoo.com"
    },
    {
      "id": 5,
      "first_name": "Roger",
      "last_name": "Bacon",
      "email": "rogerbacon12@yahoo.com"
    }
  ]
}
$ json-server --watch users.json

The --watch command is used to specify the data for the server.

$ curl localhost:3000/users/3/
{
  "id": 3,
  "first_name": "Anna",
  "last_name": "Smith",
  "email": "annasmith23@gmail.com"
}

With the curl command, we get the user with Id 3.

JSON forEach example

In the next example we retrieve data with a GET request using fetch API. We loop over the returned data with forEach.

index.html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">

<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0">
    <title>Home page</title>
</head>

<body>

    <button id="log">Log</button>

    <script src="main.js"></script>
</body>

</html>

This is the index.html page. By clicking on the Log button, we fetch the data from the JSON server test data and log it into the browser console.

main.js
const logBtn = document.getElementById('log');
logBtn.addEventListener('click', fetchData);

async function fetchData() {

    const response = await fetch('http://localhost:3000/users/');
    const data = await response.json();

    data.forEach(obj => {
        Object.entries(obj).forEach(([key, value]) => {
            console.log(`${key} ${value}`);
        });
        console.log('-------------------');
    });
}

The fetch function retrieves data as JSON array from the provided URL. With forEach, we go through the array.

Object.entries(obj).forEach(([key, value]) => {
    console.log(`${key} ${value}`);
});

We go over the entries of each object and print the key and the value to the console.

id 1 main.js:12:13
first_name Robert main.js:12:13
last_name Schwartz main.js:12:13
email rob23@gmail.com main.js:12:13
------------------- main.js:14:9
id 2 main.js:12:13
first_name Lucy main.js:12:13
last_name Ballmer main.js:12:13
email lucyb56@gmail.com main.js:12:13
------------------- main.js:14:9
...

This is the output in the browser console.

Source

Array forEach

In this article we have shown how to iterate over a JSON array with forEach.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar and I am a passionate programmer with many years of programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. So far, I have written over 1400 articles and 8 e-books. I have over eight years of experience in teaching programming.

List all JavaScript tutorials.