How JavaScript reduce() method works and its functionalities

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Founder and CEO of █████ & Software Engineer — Go | Express | Laravel | SQL | Vue/Nuxt | Flutter | Docker

#CodingTips #BackendDevelopment #WebDevelopment #Nodejs #Expressjs #SoftwareEngineering #SoftwareDevelopment #Programming The reduce() is one of powerful #JavaScript method and also one of most confusing JavaScript method that even many developers sometimes misunderstand. the JavaScript reduce() method has many functionalities including: - It can be used for grouping objects within an array - It can be used for optimizing performance by replacing filter() method with reduce() in many circumstances - It can be used for summing an array - It can be used for flatten a list of arrays And many more. Of course I am not gonna explain it one by one. But here, I am gonna explain it to you generally, about how does reduce() method work in JavaScript? Now, let's take a look at the code snippet below. At the beginning of iterations, the accumulator (written with the sign {}) starts with the initial empty object. It's just {} (an empty object). While the currentItem is the object with the data inside like: {car_id: 1, etc}. Assume currentItem is: {car_id: 1, etc}, then when below code is executed: if (acc[currentItem.car_id]) Its like the accumulator {} will check if the currentItem.car_id, which is 1 is exist or not?. But because at the beginning is just only {} (an empty object), then it will execute the code below: acc[currentItem.car_id] = [currentItem]; It means it will generate a group of current car_id 1 with its object data, related to car id 1. So, the accumulator becoming like this: { 1: [ // coming from acc[currentItem.car_id {car_id: 1, etc} // coming from currentItem ] } And looping... Still looping until it will check again if acc[currentItem.car_id] (which is car_id is 1 for example) is exist. Because it exist, then acc[currentItem.car_id].push(currentItem); So the result will be like below: { 1: [ {car_id: 1, etc} // coming from currentItem {car_id: 1, etc} // new coming from current item ] } And it always iterate all the data until reach out the end of records. And once it's done, the final result will be like below: { 1: [ {car_id: 1, etc} {car_id: 1, etc} ], 2: [ {...}, {...}, ... ] 3: [ {...}, {...}, ... ] ... } I hope this explanation helps you to understand how JavaScript reduce() method works? Back then, I had a nightmare and difficulties to understand it, but when I know it, I started to realize how powerful it is.

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Array.prototype.reduce() is just one more way to apply a callback function to each element of the array. With one big difference - callback's return value will be the callback's first argument on the next iteration. And you can set its value for the very first iteration.

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