Last week we took a look at the filter functionality. This week I will show you one of my favourite array methods called: “map”. It’s extremely powerful and useful in so many ways. The purpose of map is simple, it transforms an item in an array and pushes that transformation into a new array. The method then returns that newly created array with all the transformed items. A simple example will show you what it does.
var square = function (item) { return item * item; };
var squares = [1, 2, 3, 4].map(square);
In this example we just square a number in the array. The result will be a new array but with the squared items.
This example is easy to understand, but you might wonder what the practical use is for this function. Well in a lot of applications I find myself using map to select the identifier from an object and pass along a map of id’s.
var user = { id: 'UUID', version: 0, name: 'User 1' };
var users = [/* a list of users */];
var ids = users.map(function (u) {return u.id;});
var versions = users.map(function (u) {return u.version});
var idsAndVersions = users.map(function (u) {
return {
id: u.id,
version: u.version
};
});
These lists can be used in frameworks, api’s, ajax requests, caching, etc… everywhere you don’t need to know / send the full information of the user.
