How to execute a JavaScript function when I have its name as a string

Don't use eval unless you absolutely, positively have no other choice.

As has been mentioned, using something like this would be the best way to do it:

window["functionName"](arguments);

That, however, will not work with a namespace'd function:

window["My.Namespace.functionName"](arguments); // fail

This is how you would do that:

window["My"]["Namespace"]["functionName"](arguments); // succeeds

In order to make that easier and provide some flexibility, here is a convenience function:

function executeFunctionByName(functionName, context /*, args */) {
  var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 2);
  var namespaces = functionName.split(".");
  var func = namespaces.pop();
  for(var i = 0; i < namespaces.length; i++) {
    context = context[namespaces[i]];
  }
  return context[func].apply(context, args);
}

You would call it like so:

executeFunctionByName("My.Namespace.functionName", window, arguments);

Note, you can pass in whatever context you want, so this would do the same as above:

executeFunctionByName("Namespace.functionName", My, arguments);

Just thought I'd post a slightly altered version of Jason Bunting's very helpful function.

First, I have simplified the first statement by supplying a second parameter to slice(). The original version was working fine in all browsers except IE.

Second, I have replaced this with context in the return statement; otherwise, this was always pointing to window when the target function was being executed.

function executeFunctionByName(functionName, context /*, args */) {
    var args = Array.prototype.slice.call(arguments, 2);
    var namespaces = functionName.split(".");
    var func = namespaces.pop();
    for (var i = 0; i < namespaces.length; i++) {
        context = context[namespaces[i]];
    }
    return context[func].apply(context, args);
}

The answer to this other question shows you how to do that: Javascript equivalent of Python's locals()?

Basically, you can say

window["foo"](arg1, arg2);

or as many others have suggested, you can just use eval:

eval(fname)(arg1, arg2);

although this is extremely unsafe unless you're absolutely sure about what you're eval-ing.