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Array.map Explained in 4 Levels of Difficulty

Array.map might be JavaScript’s most useful function. Forgoing it nowadays is like donning your toolbelt without a hammer.

To further appreciate map and deepen our understanding of it, let’s see 4 levels of explanations in ascending complexity.

Tell me which ones you got and which ones surprised you!

Table of Contents

  1. To a Five Year Old
  2. To a High School Coding Student
  3. To a React Developer
  4. To a Functional Programmer

To a Five Year Old

Do you know DragonBall Z? Here are my favorite characters from the show!

Goku

Goku saluting

Vegeta

vegeta-standing-2

Trunks

trunks-with-sword-1

They’re saiyans, and they’re really strong!

I put them in this list–JavaScript calls them arrays. It lets you hold a bunch of things together:

saiyans = [goku, vegeta, trunks];

And I have code that turns them into Super Saiyans, so they get 50x stronger (literally)! This code is called a function.

turnSuperSaiyan = () => {
  /* use your imagination */
};
turnSuperSaiyan(goku);

transforming-goku

What if I want to transform all 3 of them? I have to run the function 3 times! Repeating things like that is boring 😞

turnSuperSaiyan(goku);
turnSuperSaiyan(vegeta);
turnSuperSaiyan(trunks);

Luckily, programming lets you repeat things lots of times really easily! Array.map can turn them all into Super Saiyans at once!

Just plug turnSuperSaiyan in there and get back a new array of Super Saiyan Goku, Vegeta, and Trunks.

superSaiyans = saiyans.map(turnSuperSaiyan);

mapping-saiyans

To a High School Coding Student

Hi!

So you’ve learned for loops. They’re great for performing repetitive work, but I personally haven’t needed one in years.

Don’t get me wrong, I still love automating repetitive work. In fact, most applications involve repetitive work.

Think of these examples…

  • Instagram
  • Whatsapp
  • Google search results
  • Emails
  • Contacts
  • Text messages

If you boil them down to the core, these everyday apps are just fancy lists. Much of Front-End development is transforming these lists into something user-friendly.

Of course the big picture is more complex, but the core of most apps is manipulating lists!

In a JavaScript program, we represent lists as arrays.

All arrays carry a special method called map. It lets you transform an array into a new one based on some function you give it.

Here’s some numbers.

numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

And a double function.

double = (x) => x * 2;

Can you double each one using a for loop?

doubledNumbers = [];

for (let i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) {
  doubledNumbers.push(double(numbers[i]));
}

// [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]

Cool! Here’s the same idea expressed with map.

doubledNumbers = numbers.map(double);
// [2, 4, 6, 8, 10]

map constructs the loop under the hood, so you don’t have to worry about typos or missing semicolons anymore!

cant-forget-semis-if-you-forget-loops

And this goes beyond just numbers. Here’s some users…

users = [
  {
    name: 'Bruce Wayne',
    location: 'Gotham City',
    heroName: 'Batman'
  },
  {
    name: 'Barry Allen',
    location: 'Central City',
    heroName: 'The Flash'
  },
  {
    name: 'Clark Kent',
    location: 'Kryptonopolis',
    heroName: 'Superman'
  }
];

How would you create a new array of every user’s name and heroName? Probably using a for loop.

userInfo = [];

for (let i = 0; i < users.length; i++) {
  userInfo.push({
    name: users[i].name,
    heroName: users[i].heroName
  });
}

// Result
[
  {
    name: 'Bruce Wayne',
    heroName: 'Batman'
  },
  {
    name: 'Barry Allen',
    heroName: 'The Flash'
  },
  {
    name: 'Clark Kent',
    heroName: 'Superman'
  }
];

Here’s a loop-less version.

userInfo = users.map((u) => ({
  name: u.name,
  heroName: u.heroName
}));

// Result
[
  {
    name: 'Bruce Wayne',
    heroName: 'Batman'
  },
  {
    name: 'Barry Allen',
    heroName: 'The Flash'
  },
  {
    name: 'Clark Kent',
    heroName: 'Superman'
  }
];

See how much easier that is? We can implement map like so:

map = (fn, array) => {
  const results = [];

  for (let i = 0; i < array.length; i++) {
    results.push(fn(array[i]));
  }

  return results;
};

So for every element, call the given function and store it inside a new array!

To a React Developer

Hi!

The Array prototype offers a method called map.

It will loop over your array, calling a given function on each item, and return a new array with those changes.

Instead of a for loop, just use map to get usernames and render the UI.

const App = (users) => {
  return (
    <ul>
      <li>My name is {users.map((u) => u.name)}!</li>
    </ul>
  );
};

Yep you can method chain, since it returns the same type!

const App = (users) => {
  return (
    <ul>
      {users
        .map((u) => u.name)
        .map((name) => (
          <li>My name is {name}!</li>
        ))}
    </ul>
  );
};

Tremendously useful. Most of your main components will probably use map.

To a Functional Programmer

Map simply lifts a function a -> b into a context F a -> F b.

functors

JavaScript doesn’t extend this expressibility beyond arrays, unfortunately…

i-think-harold-gets-it

Thank you Brian Lonsdorf for the wicked explanation!

And please let me know what else you’d like to see! My DMs are open for questions, comments, and suggestions!