If you're willing to go to the effort of whitelisting, then you can establish an array of valid keys, which can provide the ability to nest similar to how many systems do JSON nesting (a .
separator, or any separator of your choosing).
var whitelistedObj = whitelistJson(obj, ["company_name", "example", "address.street", "address.example"]);
function whitelistJson(obj, whitelist, separator) {
var object = {};
for (var i = 0, length = whitelist.length; i < length; ++i) {
var k = 0,
names = whitelist[i].split(separator || '.'),
value = obj,
name,
count = names.length - 1,
ref = object,
exists = true;
// fill in any empty objects from first name to end without
// picking up neighboring fields
while (k < count) { // walks to n - 1
name = names[k++];
value = value[name];
if (typeof value !== 'undefined') {
if (typeof object[name] === 'undefined') {
ref[name] = {};
}
ref = ref[name];
}
else {
exists = false;
break;
}
}
if (exists) {
ref[names[count]] = value[names[count]];
}
}
return object;
}
I have a JSFiddle showing its usage as well (to ensure it actually worked on my admittedly small sample set).