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Using Lodash's find() Function

Aug 12, 2019

Lodash's find() function returns the first element of a collection that matches the given predicate.

const arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

// `find()` executes `predicate` for every element in the array until
// `predicate` returns true.
const predicate = v => v > 3;
_.find(arr, predicate); // 4

find() is different from Lodash's filter() function because filter() returns all elements that match a condition, whereas find() returns the first element that matches a condition.

If find() doesn't find an element, it returns undefined.

const arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5];

_.find(arr, v => v > 5); // undefined

The find() function operates on a collection, not an array, which means you can use it on objects too.

const obj = { key1: 1, key2: 2, key3: 3 };

_.find(obj, v => v > 2); // 3

Alternative Syntaxes

find() supports two alernative syntaxes. If you pass an object as the predicate, the find() function will create a predicate function using the matches() function which performs a partial deep comparison. That means Lodash will find the first object in the collection that has the given properties.

const characters = [
  { firstName: 'Jean-Luc', lastName: 'Picard', rank: 'Captain', age: 59 },
  { firstName: 'Will', lastName: 'Riker', rank: 'Commander', age: 29 },
  { firstName: 'Geordi', lastName: 'La Forge', rank: 'Lieutenant', age: 29 }
];

_.find(characters, { rank: 'Commander', age: 29 }).lastName; // 'Riker'

If you pass a string str as the predicate, the find() function will return the first object in the array that has a truthy property str.

const characters = [
  { name: 'Doctor Pulaski' },
  { name: 'Tasha Yar', active: false },
  { name: 'Wesley Crusher', active: null },
  { name: 'Jean-Luc Picard', active: true }
];

// Find the first character with a truthy `active` property
_.find(characters, 'active').name; // 'Jean-Luc Picard'

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Using Lodash's find() Function

Alternative Syntaxes

More Lodash Tutorials