In this lesson I introduce you these 5 methods which can all help in searching an item in the array:

  • indexOf()
  • lastIndexOf()
  • find()
  • findIndex()
  • includes()

It’s great to know them all, but includes() is the most recently (2016) introduced one and I think the one you should use the most. Let’s see them in details.

indexOf()

a.indexOf()

Returns the index of the first matching item found, or -1 if not found

lastIndexOf()

a.lastIndexOf()

Returns the index of the last matching item found, or -1 if not found

find()

a.find((element, index, array) => {
  //return true or false
})

Returns the first item that returns true. Returns undefined if not found.

A commonly used syntax is:

a.find(x => x.id === my_id)

The above line will return the first element in the array that has id === my_id.

findIndex()

findIndex returns the index of the first item that returns true, and if not found, it returns undefined:

a.findIndex((element, index, array) => {
  //return true or false
})

includes()

includes() returns a true boolean value if the element is included in the array, or false otherwise:

if (![1,2].includes(3)) {
  console.log('Not found')
}

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