Using ES5 array methods with ES6 generators

Question

What\'s the correct way of using the new ES5 array functions with ES6 generators? Do I have to explicitly convert the iterable into an array first, or is there a better way?

Answer 1

Since Array.from does not work on Chrome at the current time, I needed another way to convert an Iterator into an Array.

(though of course you can shim it with a polyfill)

function iterator2Array(iterator) {
    var result = [];
    for (var item in iterator) {
        result.push(item)
    }
    return result;
}

For similar reasons I add a "toArray" to the prototype of a Map so that I basically convert an iterator into an Array so that you can use its functional-oriented methods; of course each item of the array will be a [key, value] tuple (exactly like in its Map.entries())

if (!Map.prototype.toArray) {
    /**
     * Transforms a map into an Array of 'tuples' [[key, value], ...]
     */
    Map.prototype.toArray = function () {
        var result = [];

        for (var item of this) {
            result.push(item);
        }

        return result;
    }
}

var m = new Map([[0, 0], ['a', 'A']]);
m.toArray()

Then you can use it as an array - remember the [key, value] approach though!

m.toArray().map(
    function(item, index, array) {
        var key = item[0],
        value = item[1];
        console.log(key + ": " + value);
        return value;
});

This will return the values of the map (ok not superuseful of course!)

If you prefer a more standar looking loop:

var i = iterator.entries(),
    result = [],
    value;
while (value = i.next().value) {
    result.push(value);
}

Answer 2

Build the array using Array.from:

console.log(Array.from(range(0, 10)).reduce((x,y) => x + y));

Array.from creates an array from an iterable. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/from.

If you want to do the reduce without creating the array, then you'll end up needing to do something like:

var sum = 0;
for (e of range(0, 10)) sum += e;

Answer 3

Generator functions return Iterator objects. The Iterator API does not include higher order Array methods such as map, reduce etc, so you need to build an intermediate Array (or use a library like wu.js).

You can use the spread operator to concisely build an Array from a (finite) iterator:

var sum = [...range(0, 10)].reduce((e, i) => e + i)