Extracting a JSON array from a cookie

Knowing nothing, I had assumed that when you JSON-ify an array, then parse it back into an object, it comes out exactly as it went in. No so, gentle reader. Arrays are stored as named objects:

 "spells":{"0":{"0":113,"1":135},"1":{},"2":{"0":227},"3":{"0":209,"1":186}}  

This means all arrays must be reconstituted manually:

 // spells     
 if (chardata.spells != null) {  
  char_spells = [];  
  for (spell_lvl_idx in chardata.spells) {  
   char_spells.push([]);  
  for (char_spell in chardata.spells[spell_lvl_idx]) {  
  char_spells[parseInt(spell_lvl_idx)].push(parseInt(chardata.spells[spell_lvl_idx][char_spell]));  
  }  
  }  
  chardata.spells = char_spells;  
 }  

In this case, a multi-dimensional array of [spell level[spells per level]].