underscore/lodash unique by multiple properties

Question

I have an array of objects with duplicates and I'm trying to get a unique listing, where uniqueness is defined by a subset of the properties of the object. For example,

{a:"1",b:"1",c:"2"}

And I want to ignore c in the uniqueness comparison.

I can do something like

_.uniq(myArray,function(element) { return element.a + "_" + element+b});

I was hoping I could do

_.uniq(myArray,function(element) { return {a:element.a, b:element.b} });

But that doesn't work. Is there something like that I can do, or do I need to create a comparable representation of the object if I'm comparing multiple properties?

Answer 1

There doesn't seem to be a straightforward way to do this, unfortunately. Short of writing your own function for this, you'll need to return something that can be directly compared for equality (as in your first example).

One method would be to just .join() the properties you need:

_.uniqBy(myArray, function(elem) { return [elem.a, elem.b].join(); });

Alternatively, you can use _.pick or _.omit to remove whatever you don't need. From there, you could use _.values with a .join(), or even just JSON.stringify:

_.uniqBy(myArray, function(elem) {
    return JSON.stringify(_.pick(elem, ['a', 'b']));
});

Keep in mind that objects are not deterministic as far as property order goes, so you may want to just stick to the explicit array approach.

P.S. Replace uniqBy with uniq for Lodash < 4