Get the Keys of a Hash in Javascript

I found myself today needing to do something that should be really easy in nearly any language: get a key of a given hash. (In the actual problem, any random key would do.)

After trying all kinds of different jQuery and array hacks, I finally found the solution; sometimes, you spend so much time looking in libraries you forget about the actual language:

var key = (function() { for(foo in obj) { return foo; })();

And that's exactly what I used; since any key is good enough, the first key is the easiest one to grab. Making it an anonymous function means I don't have to muck with break; or the like, and running it immediately means I can save the return value into a variable directly.

You can also use the for(key in Object) construct to get all the keys of any given Object. This is mostly academic, since you could always just use for directly (and without the overhead of a function). It may come in handy for debugging routines, however.

/**
 * Returns the keys of a given object.
 *
 * @param Object obj
 * @return Array
 */
function keys(obj) {
  var ks;
  for (k in obj) { ks.push(k) }
  return ks;
}

:wq