Removing duplicates from a JavaScript object array

Removing duplicates from a JavaScript array is an often encountered problem but after searching around, I have found very few good solutions to this. I wrote a small program but I realized that my solution had a O(n2) complexity. So I asked on twitter if someone knew of a better solution:

Dont like my method to filter duplicates in an array using JavaScript. Anyone have a better approach? http://bit.ly/mt1H7f #javascript #dojo—
  (@vikasrao) June 04, 2011

My friend pointed out that I can use a map. Since a JavaScript object is essentially a map. I came up with:

var arr = [
    { name: "a", age: 24},
    { name: "b", age: 25},
    { name: "a", age: 24},
    { name: "b", age: 25}
];

var newarr = [];
var unique = {};

dojo.forEach(arr, function(item) {
    if (!unique[item.age]) {
        newarr.push(item);
        unique[item.age] = item;
    }
});

console.log(dojo.toJson(newarr)); //prints [{"name":"a","age":24},{"name":"b","age":25}]

Here’s a JsFiddle link for the above code: http://jsfiddle.net/k6v3R/1/

I’m sure there are better solutions out there, but the complexity for the above code is O(n) although I’m thinking I don’t need to use both an object and an array to filter unique items.

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