array.select() in JavaScript

There is Array.filter():

var numbers = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
var filtered = numbers.filter(function(x) { return x > 3; });

// As a JavaScript 1.8 expression closure
filtered = numbers.filter(function(x) x > 3);

Note that Array.filter() is not standard ECMAScript, and it does not appear in ECMAScript specs older than ES5 (thanks Yi Jiang and jAndy). As such, it may not be supported by other ECMAScript dialects like JScript (on MSIE).

Nov 2020 Update: Array.filter is now supported across all major browsers.

There's also Array.find() in ES6 which returns the first matching element it finds.

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/find

const myArray = [1, 2, 3]

const myElement = myArray.find((element) => element === 2)

console.log(myElement)
// => 2

Underscore.js is a good library for these sorts of operations - it uses the builtin routines such as Array.filter if available, or uses its own if not.

http://documentcloud.github.com/underscore/

The docs will give an idea of use - the javascript lambda syntax is nowhere near as succinct as ruby or others (I always forget to add an explicit return statement for example) and scope is another easy way to get caught out, but you can do most things quite easily with the exception of constructs such as lazy list comprehensions.

From the docs for .select() (.filter() is an alias for the same)

Looks through each value in the list, returning an array of all the values that pass a truth test (iterator). Delegates to the native filter method, if it exists.

  var evens = _.select([1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6], function(num){ return num % 2 == 0; });
  => [2, 4, 6]

yo can extend your JS with a select method like this

Array.prototype.select = function(closure){
    for(var n = 0; n < this.length; n++) {
        if(closure(this[n])){
            return this[n];
        }
    }

    return null;
};

now you can use this:

var x = [1,2,3,4];

var a = x.select(function(v) {
    return v == 2;
});

console.log(a);

or for objects in a array

var x = [{id: 1, a: true},
    {id: 2, a: true},
    {id: 3, a: true},
    {id: 4, a: true}];

var a = x.select(function(obj) {
    return obj.id = 2;
});

console.log(a);