Multidimensional array vs array of objects

Question

I'm building a real estate market simulation running an Agent Based Model and I want to keep track of individual transactions so that I can create graphs and charts and statistic with the data. I was thinking of doing it by using a type of object that I will call Transaction:

var Transaction = function(house, askingPrice, soldPrice, daysOnMarket) {
    this.date = gameDate
    this.house = house
    this.askingPrice = askingPrice
    this.soldPrice = soldPrice
    this.daysOnMarket = daysOnMarket
};

Every time there would be a transaction it would trigger the creation of a new Transaction object instance and be pushed to transArray:

transArray.push (new Transaction(house, askingPrice, soldPrice, daysOnMarket));

Is this the best way to accumulate and store this data for my stated purposes or would it be better to use a 2 dimensional array where y would be the date and x would be the house, askingPrice, soldPrice, daysOnMarket? What do you see as advantages and disadvantages for each method?

It's up to you. I would personally use an array of objects, but it's not necessarily wrong to use a 2d array. — Spencer Wieczorek
– Spencer Wieczorek, Commented Aug 3, 2016 at 23:32
@SpencerWieczorek What do you see as advantages and disadvantages for each method? — snowfrogdev
– snowfrogdev, Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 0:10
@SpencerWieczorek indeed, while the practical usage is the same, the actual implementation behind both approaches varies. I think OP could potentially want to investigate the implications of memory usage, time complexity, and a whole variety of other concerns. — zeantsoi
– zeantsoi, Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 0:14
As it is, this will fail with gameDate not being defined - and I would not use a global in this case either. — Mark Schultheiss
– Mark Schultheiss, Commented Aug 4, 2016 at 1:12

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 12:33:02Z

You might use an array of objects so I can manipulate them using familiar verb functions; like a lookup. There are likely more "pure" Javascript methods to do some of this but I also tested the lookupfor speed and it is decent in this form.

This is copied from another answer with a more complex example here: Binding an array of objects to their specific form fields for updating/deleting

Note on that one for instance the hasDuplicates function - so you could easily then support that upon your object array - and if you have more than one object array you can re-use the functions on each one.

var myApp = myApp || {};
myApp.arrayObj = {
  indexOf: function(myArray, searchTerm, property) {
    for (var i = 0; i < myArray.length; i++) {
      if (myArray[i][property] === searchTerm) return i;
    }
    return -1;
  },
  indexAllOf: function(myArray, searchTerm, property) {
    var ai = [];
    for (var i = 0; i < myArray.length; i++) {
      if (myArray[i][property] === searchTerm) ai.push(i);
    }
    return ai;
  },
  lookup: function(myArray, searchTerm, property, firstOnly) {
    var found = [];
    var i = myArray.length;
    while (i--) {
      if (myArray[i][property] === searchTerm) {
        found.push(myArray[i]);
        if (firstOnly) break; //if only the first 
      }
    }
    return found;
  },
  lookupAll: function(myArray, searchTerm, property) {
    return this.lookup(myArray, searchTerm, property, false);
  },
  remove: function(myArray, searchTerm, property, firstOnly) {
    for (var i = myArray.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
      if (myArray[i][property] === searchTerm) {
        myArray.splice(i, 1);
        if (firstOnly) break; //if only the first term has to be removed
      }
    }
  },
  removeByIndex: function(myArray, index) {
    myArray.splice(index, 1);
  }
};

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