How to get the difference between two arrays of objects in JavaScript

Question

I have two result sets like this:

// Result 1
[
    { value: \"0\", display: \"Jamsheer\" },
    { value: \"1\", display: \"Muhammed\" },
    { value: \"2\",         


        

Answer 1

I take a slightly more general-purpose approach, although similar in ideas to the approaches of both @Cerbrus and @Kasper Moerch. I create a function that accepts a predicate to determine if two objects are equal (here we ignore the $$hashKey property, but it could be anything) and return a function which calculates the symmetric difference of two lists based on that predicate:

a = [{ value:"4a55eff3-1e0d-4a81-9105-3ffffd7521d642", display:"Jamsheer"}, { value:"644838b3-604d-4899-8b78-09e4799f586f", display:"Muhammed"}, { value:"b6ee537a-375c-45bd-b9d4-4dd84a75041d", display:"Ravi"}, { value:"e97339e1-939d-47ab-974c-1b68c9cfb536", display:"Ajmal"},  { value:"a63a6f77-c637-454e-abf2-dfb9b543af6c", display:"Ryan"}]
b = [{ value:"4a55eff3-1e0d-4a81-9105-3ffffd7521d642", display:"Jamsheer", $$hashKey:"008"}, { value:"644838b3-604d-4899-8b78-09e4799f586f", display:"Muhammed", $$hashKey:"009"}, { value:"b6ee537a-375c-45bd-b9d4-4dd84a75041d", display:"Ravi", $$hashKey:"00A"}, { value:"e97339e1-939d-47ab-974c-1b68c9cfb536", display:"Ajmal", $$hashKey:"00B"}]

var makeSymmDiffFunc = (function() {
    var contains = function(pred, a, list) {
        var idx = -1, len = list.length;
        while (++idx < len) {if (pred(a, list[idx])) {return true;}}
        return false;
    };
    var complement = function(pred, a, b) {
        return a.filter(function(elem) {return !contains(pred, elem, b);});
    };
    return function(pred) {
        return function(a, b) {
            return complement(pred, a, b).concat(complement(pred, b, a));
        };
    };
}());

var myDiff = makeSymmDiffFunc(function(x, y) {
    return x.value === y.value && x.display === y.display;
});

var result = myDiff(a, b); //=>  {value="a63a6f77-c637-454e-abf2-dfb9b543af6c", display="Ryan"}

It has one minor advantage over Cerebrus's approach (as does Kasper Moerch's approach) in that it escapes early; if it finds a match, it doesn't bother checking the rest of the list. If I had a curry function handy, I would do this a little differently, but this works fine.

Explanation

A comment asked for a more detailed explanation for beginners. Here's an attempt.

We pass the following function to makeSymmDiffFunc:

function(x, y) {
    return x.value === y.value && x.display === y.display;
}

This function is how we decide that two objects are equal. Like all functions that return true or false, it can be called a "predicate function", but that's just terminology. The main point is that makeSymmDiffFunc is configured with a function that accepts two objects and returns true if we consider them equal, false if we don't.

Using that, makeSymmDiffFunc (read "make symmetric difference function") returns us a new function:

        return function(a, b) {
            return complement(pred, a, b).concat(complement(pred, b, a));
        };

This is the function we will actually use. We pass it two lists and it finds the elements in the first not in the second, then those in the second not in the first and combine these two lists.

Looking over it again, though, I could definitely have taken a cue from your code and simplified the main function quite a bit by using some:

var makeSymmDiffFunc = (function() {
    var complement = function(pred, a, b) {
        return a.filter(function(x) {
            return !b.some(function(y) {return pred(x, y);});
        });
    };
    return function(pred) {
        return function(a, b) {
            return complement(pred, a, b).concat(complement(pred, b, a));
        };
    };
}());

complement uses the predicate and returns the elements of its first list not in its second. This is simpler than my first pass with a separate contains function.

Finally, the main function is wrapped in an immediately invoked function expression (IIFE) to keep the internal complement function out of the global scope.

---

Update, a few years later

Now that ES2015 has become pretty well ubiquitous, I would suggest the same technique, with a lot less boilerplate:

const diffBy = (pred) => (a, b) => a.filter(x => !b.some(y => pred(x, y)))
const makeSymmDiffFunc = (pred) => (a, b) => diffBy(pred)(a, b).concat(diffBy(pred)(b, a))

const myDiff = makeSymmDiffFunc((x, y) => x.value === y.value && x.display === y.display)

const result = myDiff(a, b)
//=>  {value="a63a6f77-c637-454e-abf2-dfb9b543af6c", display="Ryan"}