Reference object in an array in an object javascript

Question

I hope that title makes sense... I'm very new to doing anything with Javascript, and I've been searching for a while now.

I'm using Node-RED to receive an HTTP POST containing JSON. I have the following data being posted in msg.req.body, and want to pull out objects inside of targets :

    {
    "policy_url": "https://alerts.newrelic.com/accounts/xxxxx/policies/7477",
    "condition_id": 429539,
    "condition_name": "Error rate",
    "account_id": 773524,
    "event_type": "INCIDENT",
    "runbook_url": null,
    "severity": "CRITICAL",
    "incident_id": 50,
    "version": "1.0",
    "account_name": "Inc",
    "timestamp": 1436451988232,
    "details": "Error rate > 5% for at least 3 minutes",
    "incident_acknowledge_url": "https://alerts.newrelic.com/accounts/xxxxxx/incidents/50/acknowledge",
    "owner": "Jared Seaton",
    "policy_name": "Default Policy",
    "incident_url": "https://alerts.newrelic.com/accounts/xxxxxx/incidents/50",
    "current_state": "acknowledged",
    "targets": [{
        "id": "6002060",
        "name": "PHP Application",
        "link": "https://rpm.newrelic.com/accounts/xxxxxx/applications/6002060?tw[start]=1436450194&tw[end]=1436451994",
        "labels": {

        },
        "product": "APM",
        "type": "Application"
    }]
}

I want to format a string to send via TCP to insert an event into our event management system. So I tried the following:

msg.payload = msg.req.body.targets[0] + "|" + msg.req.body.severity + "|" + msg.req.body.current_state + "|" + msg.req.body.details + "|" + msg.req.body.condition_name + "\n\n";
return(msg);

This results in a message of:

[object Object]|CRITICAL|acknowledged|Error rate > 5% for at least 3 minutes|Error rate 

I've tried a few different things, but I either get a null return, or the [object Object]. It feels like I'm close...

Can anyone assist?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

target[0] is an object and that is why you see [object Object].

You should instead do msg.req.body.targets[0].name to access the property of that object.

The result message would look something like this

PHP Application|CRITICAL|acknowledged|Error rate > 5% for at least 3 minutes|Error rate 

Answer 2

You want JSON.stringify()

msg.payload = JSON.stringify(msg.req.body.targets[0]) + "|" + msg.req.body.severity + "|" + msg.req.body.current_state + "|" + msg.req.body.details + "|" + msg.req.body.condition_name + "\n\n";
return(msg);

This will turn the object that is stored in the first slot in the target array into it's string representation.