Building iterators

Let's build our own iterators: myEach, myMap, and myReduce.

Getting started

Fork & Clone this repo.
Plan Ahead: Research each iterator before you write any code.
Check Your Solution: Write Driver Code, or run the included Tests (see below).

Before You Start Coding

For the following exercises it is essential that you understand the requirements to fully implement the built-in array method. See MDN Array Reference

Before you start each problem, ask yourself questions such as:

What are our inputs?
What is our output?
What happens on each loop?
What does the callback function do?
What gets passed into our callback function? i.e. what arguments does it receive? (it's inputs)
- Where does it come from?
- How do we know what to name it?

You should be able to answer most of these questions based on the documentation you just read or by experimenting in the browser developer tools.

Exercises

Create a function myFind which implements Array.prototype.find
Create a function myEach which implements Array.prototype.forEach
Create a function myMap which implements Array.prototype.map
Create a function myFilter which implements Array.prototype.filter
Create a function myReduce which implements Array.prototype.reduce

Pro-Tip: It's easier to build incrementally than to try to do everything all at once. Remember to start small and add features later.

Check Your Solution

Checking Your Code: Using Driver Code

To check your code manually, we recommend you write "driver code" inside of index.js instead of from inside your iterator files (e.g. myEach.js, myMap.js, myReduce.js). This helps keep your "driver code" seperate from your "implementation code".

Here's an example of what good driver code looks like:

//index.js
var input = ["a","b","c"];
var output = myMap(input, function capitalize(v){
    return v.toUpperCase();
});
console.log('Testing myMap')
console.log("Expected:", ["A", "B", "C"], "Got:", output)

To execute this code from the command-line, you need to type:

# make sure you are inside the building-js-iterators-lab directory
node index.js

Note: Even though myMap lives in a different file, we still have access to it in index.js. That's what require is doing.

Checking Your Code: Using Tests

For each problem (problems.forEach!), you can run the provided tests to check your work and confirm your solution.

Test Setup

Make sure you are inside the building-js-iterators-lab directory.

From the command-line, run:

# make sure you are inside the building-js-iterators-lab directory
npm install
npm install -g mocha

Running the tests

To run the tests for myMap from the command-line, type:

# make sure you are inside the building-js-iterators-lab directory
mocha test/myMapSpec.js

This will test the myMap function you wrote in myMap.js.

You can do the same thing for the other iterators as well:

# make sure you are inside the building-js-iterators-lab directory
mocha test/myEachSpec.js
mocha test/myReduceSpec.js

Pro-Tip: Let the tests call your function for you. You should not be calling, e.g. myMap in your code directly.

Sample output:

GREEN (✓) - test has passed. Nice work! RED - test has failed. Keep working!

For example, here is some test output with three passing (✓) tests:

$ mocha test/myMapSpec.js


 myMap
   1) takes and calls a callback function
      results:  []
   2) passes each item in the array to the callback
      results:  []
   3) passes each index in the array to the callback
   ✓ passes the entire array to the callback
      results:  undefined
   4) returns an array
      results:  undefined
   5) returns an array with the same number of elements
      results:  undefined
   6) returns an array constructed from the return values of the callback
      results:  [ 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd' ]
   ✓ doesn't alter the original array
      results:  []
   ✓ works with arrays of length 0
      results:  []
   7) works with arrays of length 1

Note: Sometimes tests pass right away. This is called a "false positive". As you start writing code, some of your prematurely "green" tests will turn "red"!

Example - Failure Message 7

Here's an example of a failure messages (pay close attention to these, they give you hints!):

7) myMap works with arrays of length 1:

  AssertionError: expected 0 to equal 1
  + expected - actual

  +1
  -0

  at Context.testArrayL1 (test/myMapSpec.js:115:38)

An assertion is a statement that asserts or says this "MUST BE TRUE". If the statement turns out to be false, then the assertion fails and the test fails.

In the above output we can see that the assertion in test/myMapSpec.js:115:38 (at line 115, and at character 38) expected 0 (the "actual" result) to equal 1 (the "expected" result).

Example - Failure Message 2

2) myMap passes each item in the array to the callback:
   AssertionError: expected [] to have the same members as [ 'a', 'b', 'c', 'd' ]
    at Context.testEachItem (test/myMapSpec.js:37:36)

What do you think this means?

At line 37 in the test file there was an expectation that an array would have the elements ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']. But instead it got an empty array!

SwittS/building-js-iterators-lab