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Find Objects by Nested Properties with Lodash

Jun 22, 2022

If you need to search for a nested object, you can use Lodash's .find() function. It takes three arguments:

collection: which can be either an array or object.
predicate: the callback function that Lodash calls on every element in the array.
fromIndex: the index to search from. Defaults to 0.

Lodash will return the first element for which predicate returns a truthy value, or undefined if there's no such element. You can write a predicate that checks whether an element has a certain nested property. The following code finds objects by the name.first property.

const _ = require('lodash');

const obj = [
  {
    name: {
        first: 'Test',
        last: 'Testerson'
    },
    age: 2,
    location: 'Florida'
  },
  {
    name: {
        first: 'Obi-wan',
        last: 'Kenobi'
    },
    age: 45,
    location: 'Tatooine'
  },
  {
    name: {
        first: 'Masteringjs',
        last: '.io'
    },
    age: 5,
    location: 'Florida'
  }
];

let result = _.find(obj, el => el.name.first === 'Test');

result; // { name: { first: 'Test', last: 'Testerson', age: 2 }, location: 'Florida' }

result = _.find(obj, el => el.name.first === 'something else');

result; // undefined

To avoid cases where el.name is null or undefined, you can use optional chaining ?., or Lodash's get() function.

let result = _.find(obj, el => el?.name?.first === 'Test');

// Equivalent:
result = _.find(obj, el => _.get(el, 'name.first') === 'Test');

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Find Objects by Nested Properties with Lodash

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