title: How to overwrite JavaScript object values using Object()
body: <p>I am still somewhat new to JavaScript, Node, etc. and come from a Groovy background (which has extremely similar syntax to JavaScript).  In Groovy, I can easily do something like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>def myMap1 = {};
  def myMap2 = {};
  
  myMap1["key1"] = "value1";
  myMap1["key2"] = "value2";
  myMap1["key3"] = "value3";
  
  myMap1.each() { key, value =&gt;
      myMap2[key] = value;
  }
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This would iterate through the existing map (myMap1) and copy the values for each key to the new map (myMap2), with the same key names.  Easy as pie.  However, JS has a concept of the prototype, which has been driving me crazy because you have to use hasOwnProperty, the index of the item sort of thing, etc and it results in a lot of code for something that's supposed to be really simple.  </p>
  
  <p>Looking at the MDN docs for Object(), it looks like JS has implemented something that allows a developer to access key/value pairs without having to deal with prototyping and all of that stuff, and you can just access the data in the object, and not properties of the object.  I now have this:</p>
  
  <p><div class="snippet" data-lang="js" data-hide="false" data-console="true" data-babel="false">
  <div class="snippet-code">
  <pre class="snippet-code-js lang-js prettyprint-override"><code>var existingData = {"foo":"thing","bar":"otherThing","baz":"whatever"};
  var update = {"foo":"newStuff","bar":"thisChanged","baz":"arghh"};
  
  for (const [ key, value ] of Object.entries(update)) {
      console.log("Old value is " + existingData[key]);
      existingData[key] = value;
      console.log("Setting " + existingData[key] + " to " + value);
  }</code></pre>
  </div>
  </div>
  </p>
  
  <p>I would think this would work, but I get this in the console instead:</p>
  
  <pre><code>Old value is undefined
  Setting thing to thing
  Old value is undefined
  Setting otherThing to otherThing
  Old value is undefined
  Setting whatever to whatever
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It looks like existingData[key] does not reference the key in the key/value pair, but instead the value or something?  How do I tell it, "for this key name in this second object, set this value?"  I've been searching forever on Google and everything is either doing it the old way (with indexes) or is overly complicated for no particular reason.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.</p>