One of the joys of programming is stumbling across novel ways to solve common problems.
For example, take the totally banal task of filtering falsy values from an array.
I typically perform this task in one of two ways.
Either, passing a function to JavaScript’s Array.prototype.filter that simply returns each value in the array and relies on truthiness for filtering:
const array = [1, 2, undefined, 4]
const filteredArray = array.filter(value => value)Or, leveraging a utility like LoDash’s compact:
const array = [1, 2, undefined, 4]
const filteredArray = _.compact(array)While both approaches solve the problem, both feel inelegant. In the first example I dislike the redundancy of (value => value). In the second, I feel guilty reaching for a utility when JavaScript provides native array filtering.
This week, I came across a third approach I find much more appealing:
const array = [1, 2, undefined, 4]
const filteredArray = array.filter(Boolean)Native and not redundant!