Lodash

Language: JavaScript

Utility

Lodash was created by John-David Dalton to offer a more consistent and performant alternative to native JavaScript utilities. It has become widely adopted due to its convenience, extensive documentation, and functional programming utilities.

Lodash is a modern JavaScript utility library delivering modularity, performance, and extras. It provides tools for working with arrays, objects, strings, functions, and more, simplifying common programming tasks.

Installation

npm: npm install lodash
yarn: yarn add lodash

Usage

Lodash provides hundreds of utility functions for data manipulation, functional programming, and performance optimization. Functions are available for arrays, objects, strings, numbers, and more.

Using _.chunk

import _ from 'lodash';
const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
console.log(_.chunk(array, 2)); // [[1,2],[3,4],[5]]

Splits an array into chunks of the specified size.

Using _.merge

import _ from 'lodash';
const object = { a: 1 };
const other = { b: 2 };
console.log(_.merge(object, other)); // { a: 1, b: 2 }

Deep merges two objects together.

Debounce function

import _ from 'lodash';
const log = () => console.log('Called!');
const debouncedLog = _.debounce(log, 1000);
debouncedLog(); debouncedLog(); debouncedLog();

Creates a debounced function that delays invoking `log` until after 1 second has elapsed since the last call.

Throttle function

import _ from 'lodash';
const log = () => console.log('Called!');
const throttledLog = _.throttle(log, 2000);
throttledLog(); throttledLog();

Creates a throttled function that invokes `log` at most once every 2 seconds.

Cloning objects

import _ from 'lodash';
const obj = { a: 1, b: { c: 2 } };
const clone = _.cloneDeep(obj);
console.log(clone);

Performs a deep clone of an object.

Chaining methods

import _ from 'lodash';
const result = _( [1,2,3,4] ).map(n => n * 2).filter(n => n > 4).value();
console.log(result); // [6,8]

Demonstrates chaining multiple Lodash methods to transform data.

Error Handling

Cannot read property of undefined: Ensure input objects or arrays are not undefined before using Lodash methods.
Unexpected results in deep merge: Use `_.merge` for deep merge and `_.assign` for shallow merge based on the requirement.

Best Practices

Import only the functions you need to reduce bundle size.

Use chaining (`_()`) for readable sequences of operations.

Use debouncing and throttling for performance-sensitive event handlers.

Prefer Lodash for deep cloning or merging objects instead of manual implementations.

Leverage utility functions for safer and cleaner data manipulation.

Official DocsGithub