Get the Last Element in an Array in JavaScript

To get the last element in an array, you get the array's .length property and get the element at index length - 1.

const array = ['a', 'b', 'c'];
array.length; // 5
array[array.length - 1]; // 5

JavaScript doesn't throw array out of bounds exceptions, so it is safe to use array[array.length - 1] without checking if array.length === 0. JavaScript will return undefined if array is empty.

const array = [];
array[array.length - 1]; // undefined

Using slice()

You can also use the slice() function to get the last element in an array. The slice() method returns a subsection of the array, and supports negative indexes. That means slice(-1) returns a 1 element array with just the last element in the original array.

const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
array.slice(-1); // [5]

So to get the last element of an array without referencing the length property using the following:

const lastElement = array.slice(-1)[0]; // 5

You can also use destructuring if you do not wish to use the syntax from above.

const array = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];
const [last] = array.slice(-1); // returns 5

This approach also returns undefined if array is empty.

const array = [];
const [last] = array.slice(-1); // undefined

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