Object comparison in JavaScript

Unfortunately there is no perfect way, unless you use _proto_ recursively and access all non-enumerable properties, but this works in Firefox only.

So the best I can do is to guess usage scenarios.

1) Fast and limited.

Works when you have simple JSON-style objects without methods and DOM nodes inside:

 JSON.stringify(obj1) === JSON.stringify(obj2) 

The ORDER of the properties IS IMPORTANT, so this method will return false for following objects:

 x = {a: 1, b: 2};
 y = {b: 2, a: 1};

2) Slow and more generic.

Compares objects without digging into prototypes, then compares properties' projections recursively, and also compares constructors.

This is almost correct algorithm:

function deepCompare () {
  var i, l, leftChain, rightChain;

  function compare2Objects (x, y) {
    var p;

    // remember that NaN === NaN returns false
    // and isNaN(undefined) returns true
    if (isNaN(x) && isNaN(y) && typeof x === 'number' && typeof y === 'number') {
         return true;
    }

    // Compare primitives and functions.     
    // Check if both arguments link to the same object.
    // Especially useful on the step where we compare prototypes
    if (x === y) {
        return true;
    }

    // Works in case when functions are created in constructor.
    // Comparing dates is a common scenario. Another built-ins?
    // We can even handle functions passed across iframes
    if ((typeof x === 'function' && typeof y === 'function') ||
       (x instanceof Date && y instanceof Date) ||
       (x instanceof RegExp && y instanceof RegExp) ||
       (x instanceof String && y instanceof String) ||
       (x instanceof Number && y instanceof Number)) {
        return x.toString() === y.toString();
    }

    // At last checking prototypes as good as we can
    if (!(x instanceof Object && y instanceof Object)) {
        return false;
    }

    if (x.isPrototypeOf(y) || y.isPrototypeOf(x)) {
        return false;
    }

    if (x.constructor !== y.constructor) {
        return false;
    }

    if (x.prototype !== y.prototype) {
        return false;
    }

    // Check for infinitive linking loops
    if (leftChain.indexOf(x) > -1 || rightChain.indexOf(y) > -1) {
         return false;
    }

    // Quick checking of one object being a subset of another.
    // todo: cache the structure of arguments[0] for performance
    for (p in y) {
        if (y.hasOwnProperty(p) !== x.hasOwnProperty(p)) {
            return false;
        }
        else if (typeof y[p] !== typeof x[p]) {
            return false;
        }
    }

    for (p in x) {
        if (y.hasOwnProperty(p) !== x.hasOwnProperty(p)) {
            return false;
        }
        else if (typeof y[p] !== typeof x[p]) {
            return false;
        }

        switch (typeof (x[p])) {
            case 'object':
            case 'function':

                leftChain.push(x);
                rightChain.push(y);

                if (!compare2Objects (x[p], y[p])) {
                    return false;
                }

                leftChain.pop();
                rightChain.pop();
                break;

            default:
                if (x[p] !== y[p]) {
                    return false;
                }
                break;
        }
    }

    return true;
  }

  if (arguments.length < 1) {
    return true; //Die silently? Don't know how to handle such case, please help...
    // throw "Need two or more arguments to compare";
  }

  for (i = 1, l = arguments.length; i < l; i++) {

      leftChain = []; //Todo: this can be cached
      rightChain = [];

      if (!compare2Objects(arguments[0], arguments[i])) {
          return false;
      }
  }

  return true;
}

Known issues (well, they have very low priority, probably you'll never notice them):

• objects with different prototype structure but same projection
• functions may have identical text but refer to different closures

Tests: passes tests are from How to determine equality for two JavaScript objects?.

Certainly not the only way - you could prototype a method (against Object here but I certainly wouldn't suggest using Object for live code) to replicate C#/Java style comparison methods.

Edit, since a general example seems to be expected:

Object.prototype.equals = function(x)
{
    for(p in this)
    {
        switch(typeof(this[p]))
        {
            case 'object':
                if (!this[p].equals(x[p])) { return false }; break;
            case 'function':
                if (typeof(x[p])=='undefined' || (p != 'equals' && this[p].toString() != x[p].toString())) { return false; }; break;
            default:
                if (this[p] != x[p]) { return false; }
        }
    }

    for(p in x)
    {
        if(typeof(this[p])=='undefined') {return false;}
    }

    return true;
}

Note that testing methods with toString() is absolutely not good enough but a method which would be acceptable is very hard because of the problem of whitespace having meaning or not, never mind synonym methods and methods producing the same result with different implementations. And the problems of prototyping against Object in general.

If you work without the JSON library, maybe this will help you out:

Object.prototype.equals = function(b) {
    var a = this;
    for(i in a) {
        if(typeof b[i] == 'undefined') {
            return false;
        }
        if(typeof b[i] == 'object') {
            if(!b[i].equals(a[i])) {
                return false;
            }
        }
        if(b[i] != a[i]) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    for(i in b) {
        if(typeof a[i] == 'undefined') {
            return false;
        }
        if(typeof a[i] == 'object') {
            if(!a[i].equals(b[i])) {
                return false;
            }
        }
        if(a[i] != b[i]) {
            return false;
        }
    }
    return true;
}

var a = {foo:'bar', bar: {blub:'bla'}};
var b = {foo:'bar', bar: {blub:'blob'}};
alert(a.equals(b)); // alert's a false

if you want to check for methods explicitly you can use the method.toSource() or method.toString() methods.