Better data structure for vendorMacs.json

[brannondorsey]

A few quick thoughts about how we are storing, loading, parsing, and using this small database.

1. We should load this file via AJAX instead of a script include to keep from stalling page load.
2. We should store this as valid JSON rather than JS (creating and assigning a vendor object).
3. We should use a dictionary-style data structure rather than an array so that lookups are less time consuming:

{
"00:00:00": "Xerox",
"00:00:01": "Xerox",
"00:00:02": "Xerox",
"00:00:03": "Xerox",
"00:00:04": "Xerox",
"00:00:05": "Xerox"
}

vs

"mapping": [
{
"mac_prefix": "00:00:00",
"vendor_name": "Xerox"
},
{
"mac_prefix": "00:00:01",
"vendor_name": "Xerox"
},
{
"mac_prefix": "00:00:02",
"vendor_name": "Xerox"
},
{
"mac_prefix": "00:00:03",
"vendor_name": "Xerox"
},
{
"mac_prefix": "00:00:04",
"vendor_name": "Xerox"
},
{
"mac_prefix": "00:00:05",
"vendor_name": "Xerox"
}
]

Then lookups are as easy as:

if (vendors.hasOwnProperty("00:00:00")) {
    var ven = vendors["00:00:00"]
}

rather than

for (var i = 0; i < vendor.mapping.length; i++) {
     if (vendor.mapping[i].mac_prefix == "00:00:00"){
        var ven =   vendor.mapping[i].vendor_name;          
     }
}

This isn't urgent and changes will overhaul some working code, so lets do this another day. I am up to make this change if you agree that this is the right decision @nbriz.

[nbriz]

yea, that was a lazy implementation on my part ^___^

[brannondorsey]

Vendor data is now being stored in a hashmap format and loaded via AJAX rather than a <script> include tag.