How to flatten array in jQuery?

Question

How to simply flatten array in jQuery? I have:

[1, 2, [3, 4], [5, 6], 7]

And I want:

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

Answer 1

Use recursion if you have multiple levels:

flaten = function(flatened, arr) {
    for(var i=0;i<arr.length;i++) {
        if (typeof arr[i]!="object") {
            flatened.push(arr[i]);
        }
        else {
            flaten(flatened,arr[i]);
        }
    }
    return;
}

a=[1,[4,2],[2,7,[6,4]],3];
b=[];
flaten(b,a);
console.log(b);

Answer 2

You can use jQuery.map, which is the way to go if you have the jQuery Library already loaded.

$.map( [1, 2, [3, 4], [5, 6], 7], function(n){
   return n;
});

Returns

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]

Answer 3

You can use Array.prototype.reduce which is technically not jQuery, but valid ES5:

var multidimensionArray = [1, 2, [3, 4], [5, 6], 7];
var initialValue = [];

var flattened = multidimensionArray.reduce(function(accumulator, current) {
    return accumulator.concat(current);
}, initialValue);

console.log(flattened);

Answer 4

To recursively flatten an array you can use the native Array.reduce function. The is no need to use jQuery for that.

function flatten(arr) {
    return arr.reduce(function flatten(res, a) { 
        Array.isArray(a) ? a.reduce(flatten, res) : res.push(a);
        return res;
    }, []);
}

Executing

flatten([1, 2, [3, 4, [5, 6]]])

returns

[ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 ]

Answer 5

var a = [1, 2, [3, 4], [5, [6, [7, 8]]]];
var b = [];

function flatten(e,b){
    if(typeof e.length != "undefined")
    {
        for (var i=0;i<e.length;i++)
        {
            flatten(e[i],b);
        }
    }
    else
    {
        b.push(e);
    }
}
flatten(a,b);
console.log(b);

The flatten function should do it, and this doesn't require jQuery. Just copy all of this into Firebug and run it.

Answer 6

Here's how you could use jquery to flatten deeply nested arrays:

$.map([1, 2, [3, 4], [5, [6, [7, 8]]]], function recurs(n) {
    return ($.isArray(n) ? $.map(n, recurs): n);
});

Returns:

[1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8]

Takes advantage of jQuery.map as well as jQuery.isArray.