Enumerables

In Ember.js, an Enumerable is any object that contains a number of child objects, and which allows you to work with those children using the Ember.Enumerable API. The most common Enumerable in the majority of apps is the native JavaScript array, which Ember.js extends to conform to the Enumerable interface.

By providing a standardized interface for dealing with enumerables, Ember.js allows you to completely change the way your underlying data is stored without having to modify the other parts of your application that access it.

The Enumerable API follows ECMAScript specifications as much as possible. This minimizes incompatibility with other libraries, and allows Ember.js to use the native browser implementations in arrays where available.

For instance, all Enumerables support the standard forEach method:

[1,2,3].forEach(function(item) {
  console.log(item);
});

//=> 1
//=> 2
//=> 3

In general, Enumerable methods, like forEach, take an optional second parameter, which will become the value of this in the callback function:

var array = [1,2,3];

array.forEach(function(item) {
  console.log(item, this.indexOf(item));
}, array)

//=> 1 0
//=> 2 1
//=> 3 2

Usually, objects that represent lists implement the Enumerable interface. Some examples:

• Array - Ember extends the native JavaScript Array with the Enumerable interface (unless you disable prototype extensions.)
• Ember.Set - A data structure that can efficiently answer whether it includes an object.

In this guide, we'll explore some of the most common Enumerable conveniences. For the full list, please see the Ember.Enumerable API reference documentation.

To enumerate all the values of an enumerable object, use the forEach method:

var food = ["Poi", "Ono", "Adobo Chicken"];

food.forEach(function(item, index) {
  console.log('Menu Item %@: %@'.fmt(index+1, item));
});

// Menu Item 1: Poi
// Menu Item 2: Ono
// Menu Item 3: Adobo Chicken

You can make a native array copy of any object that implements Ember.Enumerable by calling the toArray() method:

var states = Ember.Set.create();

states.add("Hawaii");
states.add("California")

states.toArray()
//=> ["Hawaii", "California"]

Note that in many enumerables, such as the Ember.Set used in this example, the order of the resulting array is not guaranteed.

All Enumerables expose firstObject and lastObject properties that you can bind to.

var animals = ["rooster", "pig"];

animals.get('lastObject');
//=> "pig"

animals.pushObject("peacock");

animals.get('lastObject');
//=> "peacock"

You can easily transform each item in an enumerable using the map() method, which creates a new array with results of calling a function on each item in the enumerable.

var words = ["goodbye", "cruel", "world"];

var emphaticWords = words.map(function(item) {
  return item + "!";
});
// ["goodbye!", "cruel!", "world!"]

If your enumerable is composed of objects, there is a mapBy() method that will extract the named property from each of those objects in turn and return a new array:

var hawaii = Ember.Object.create({
  capital: "Honolulu"
});

var california = Ember.Object.create({
  capital: "Sacramento"
});

var states = [hawaii, california];

states.mapBy('capital');
//=> ["Honolulu", "Sacramento"]

Another common task to perform on an Enumerable is to take the Enumerable as input, and return an Array after filtering it based on some criteria.

For arbitrary filtering, use the filter method. The filter method expects the callback to return true if Ember should include it in the final Array, and false or undefined if Ember should not.

var arr = [1,2,3,4,5];

arr.filter(function(item, index, self) {
  if (item < 4) { return true; }
})

// returns [1,2,3]

When working with a collection of Ember objects, you will often want to filter a set of objects based upon the value of some property. The filterBy method provides a shortcut.

Todo = Ember.Object.extend({
  title: null,
  isDone: false
});

todos = [
  Todo.create({ title: 'Write code', isDone: true }),
  Todo.create({ title: 'Go to sleep' })
];

todos.filterBy('isDone', true);

// returns an Array containing only items with `isDone == true`

If you want to return just the first matched value, rather than an Array containing all of the matched values, you can use find and findBy, which work just like filter and filterBy, but return only one item.

If you want to find out whether every item in an Enumerable matches some condition, you can use the every method:

Person = Ember.Object.extend({
  name: null,
  isHappy: false
});

var people = [
  Person.create({ name: 'Yehuda', isHappy: true }),
  Person.create({ name: 'Majd', isHappy: false })
];

people.every(function(person, index, self) {
  if(person.get('isHappy')) { return true; }
});

// returns false

If you want to find out whether at least one item in an Enumerable matches some conditions, you can use the some method:

people.some(function(person, index, self) {
  if(person.get('isHappy')) { return true; }
});

// returns true

Just like the filtering methods, the every and some methods have analogous isEvery and isAny methods.

people.isEvery('isHappy', true) // false
people.isAny('isHappy', true)  // true