More often than not, you want an object of your form data to send to the server. I use cakePHP, which makes heavy use of input names like data[ModelName][attribute]. I needed a way to get that same nested format into an object I could send to the server in an $.ajax call so I made one.
$.fn.serializeObject works on any level of nested array syntax in your element names and creates arrays if items end in [], just like you’d expect.
For more information and source, check out my github repo.
For a demo, check out: http://jsfiddle.net/danheberden/3xcTG/
Example document:
<div id="test">
<input name="text1" value="txt-one" />
<input type="checkbox"
name="top[child][]" value="1" checked="checked" />
<input type="checkbox"
name="top[child][]" value="2" checked="checked" />
<input type="checkbox"
name="top[child][]" value="3" checked="checked" />
<select name="another[select]">
<option value="opt"></option>
</select>
</div>
Running $( '#test' ).serializeObject() returns:
{
text1: "txt-one",
top: {
child: [ "1", "2", "3" ]
},
another: {
select: "opt"
}
}
