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What is the JavaScript Set in ES2015 and when should you use it?

The ES2015 spec is full of new features that continuously be introduced in all the new browsers. The Set collection is one of those new things.

My first thought was, well I could just use a normal Array! But I will show you what you can do with the Set collection.

What is the ES2015 Set?

What is a Set and what can you do with it? Well, the Mozilla Docs are very clear about this:

The Set collection lets you store unique values of any type, whether primitive values or object references. source: Mozilla Docs

This special Object can store all kinds of values like normal objects, but they have to be unique, duplicate values will be filtered out of it.

Thanks to the tweet of Addy Osmani, I discovered it Set()!

Filtering duplicate values out of a JavaScript Array, was always a hassle, you needed to loop through the Array and figure it out yourself, so Set is making it a lot easier. 😁

Add data to Set

There are a few ways to add data to a Set collection.

Pass as parameter

This is an example of adding data as a parameter to a Set collection.

    const numbersSet = new Set([1,2,3,4,5]);
    const stringSet = new Set(['Jan', 'Rick', 'Raymon', 'Tim']);
    const objectSet = new Set([{a: 1, b: 2}]);
    const arraySet = new Set([['javascript', 'coffeescript'], ['css', 'sass']]);

Add data by the add method

The other way of passing data into a Set collection is by using the add() method.

    const newSetObject = new Set();
    newSetObject.add('Raymon');
    newSetObject.add({a: 1, b: 2});
    newSetObject.add(1).add(2).add(3).add(4).add(5)

// Result: Raymon, {a: 1, b: 2}, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

Check values inside Set with has method

The Set collection has a very handy method for checking if a certain value is inside the object.

    const numbersSet = new Set([1,2,3,4,5]);
    const stringSet = new Set(['Jan', 'Rick', 'Raymon', 'Tim']);
    const objectSet = new Set([{a: 1, b: 2}]);
    const arraySet = new Set([['javascript', 'coffeescript'], ['css', 'sass']]);

    numberSet.has(4); // true
    numberSet.has(6); // false
    stringSet.has('Raymon'); // true
    objectSet.has({a: 1, b: 2}); // false
    arraySet.has('css'); // false

The has() method works fine on primitive values, but non-primitive values like the Object and Array is not working.

There is 1 reason why the non-primitive values are not working link the primitive values. The reason is that the has() method is comparing not only the values but also it’s reference with the === operator.

If you have the reference to the Object or Array in a variable and use that in the has() method, then the result will be as expected.

    const exampleObject = {a: 1, b: 2};
    const exampleArray1 = ['javascript', 'coffeescript']
    const exampleArray2 = ['css', 'sass'];
    const objectSet = new Set([exampleObject]);
    const arraySet = new Set([exampleArray1, exampleArray2]);

    objectSet.has({a: 1, b: 2}); // false
    objectSet.has(exampleObject); // true
    arraySet.has('css'); // false
    arraySet.has(exampleArray1); // true
    arraySet.has(exampleArray2); // true

So keep in mind that it is important to have a reference to the non-primitive values when you use the has() method on the Set collection.

Remove data from the Set

Adding data to a Set collection was very simple, but deleting data from the collection is as easy.

Remove data with delete method

If you want to remove an item on the Set collection, simply use the remove method.

    const numbersSetObject = new Set([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]);
    numbersSetObject.has(2); // true
    numbersSetObject.delete(2);
    numbersSetObject.has(2); // false
    console.log(numbersSetObject); // 1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Remove all data with clear method

But if you want to remove all the data from the Set collection, use the clear method.

    const numbersSetObject = new Set([1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]);
    numbersSetObject.has(2); // true
    numbersSetObject.clear();
    console.log([...numbersSetObject]); // []

Check the number of items with the size property

Like the Array you check the number of items with the length property, the Set collection has the size property for that.

If we check the Set collection from the previous example, the size will be 7.

    newSetObject.size // 7

Filter duplicate primitive values

If I try to put duplicated primitive values into the Set, only the unique ones stay.

    const uniqueArray = new Set([1,2,2,2,3,4,5,5,6,7,9,9,8]);
    console.log('uniqueArray: ', uniqueArray)
    // unique: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 8

Filter duplicate non-primitive values

The nonprimitive values are bit different with filtering out the duplicates. The docs are very clear, the Set is not comparing Objects in itself, they compare the reference.

See it as comparing things with the == operator, but with the === operator the reference and value will be compared.

If we try to put 2 equal objects, with a different reference in the Set, then there will be no problem.

    const objectSet = new Set([{a: 1, b: 2}, {a: 1, b: 2}]);
    console.log('objectSet: ', objectSet);
    // objectSet: {a: 1, b: 2}, {a: 1, b: 2};

But what happened when we put in equal objects with the same reference?

    const demoObject = {a: 1, b: 2};
    const objectSet = new Set([demoObject, demoObject]);
    console.log('objectSet: ', objectSet);
    // objectSet: {a: 1, b: 2};

Hope you guessed that the objectSet contains only 1 demoObject. It clears the duplicated 😁

Loop over a Set

The nice thing about a Set is, you can loop over a Set!

The docs tell more about the Set:

Set objects are collections of values. You can iterate through the elements of a set in insertion order. source: Mozilla Docs

To loop over a Set collection we can use the for-of loop and the forEach method which is attached to the Set.

Loop with forEach method

With Set.forEach() you can loop through all the data in the Set collection.

    const objectSet = new Set([{a: 1, b: 2}, {a: 1, b: 2}]);
    objectSet.forEach(object => {
        console.log('Object: ', object);
    })

    // result:
    // Object:  {a: 1, b: 2}
    // Object:  {a: 1, b: 2}

Loop with for-of loop method

With the for-of loop we have a few methods to loop over all the items inside the Set collection.

  • entries()
  • keys()
  • values()
    const objectSet = new Set([{a: 1, b: 2}, {a: 1, b: 2}]);
    for (let [key, value] of objectSet.entries())  {
        console.log(key);
    }

    // {a: 1, b: 2}
    // {a: 1, b: 2}

The only weird thing is, that entries, keys and values methods give back exactly the same thing on the Set. Maybe it is because Set and Map API have a lot in common.

Difference between Set and Map

The biggest difference between a Map and Set is that the Set looks very similar to an Array and a Map looks more like an Object.

I hope that this article will help you! If you got questions please let me know in the comments?