Javascript Hijinks... a question for the code gurus.

[void.face]

'ello!

So I've been working on a funnel for a few weeks now, and I have all of the layout and basic functions done. It's essentially a glorified chat lander that is arranged into chat lobby -> member bio -> simulated chat.

I coded the whole thing using a single member with the intention of coming back through once everything was done and add the code to display multiple members.

What I'm doing is storing member names, ages, bios, and scripted chat messages in a JSON file. The trouble I'm having is wrapping my head around how to use the fetch/response stuff to get my data out of the JSON file and into an array where I can use it.

The code below is producing the result I want, but it's sloppy as hell.

Here's the JSON file:

[
    {
          "name": "Bill",
         "age": "44"
     },
     {
         "name": "Ted",
         "age":  "45"
    }
]

Here's the script I'm using to populate an array from the JSON file:

<script>
          let a = [];

          fetch('/my.json')
              .then(response => response.json())
              .then(data => { a  = [...data] });

         setTimeout(function ()  { console.log(a); }, 500);
</script>

The problem here is that I'm copying