Concatenate Nested Array after Mapping

Question

I have an array with several category objects, each of which has an items property containing an array of item objects. I want to map each item in each category to an object[] with objects that have the properties value and label. For some reason, I can't perform the concatenation.

var categories = [{
                name: "category1",
                items: [{
                    itemId: 1,
                    name: "Item1"
                }, {
                    itemId: 2,
                    name: "Item2"
                }]
            }, {
                name: "category2",
                items: [{
                    itemId: 3,
                    name: "Item3"
                }, {
                    itemId: 4,
                    name: "Item4"
                }]
            }];

var items = [];
for(var i = 0; i < categories.length; i++){
    items.concat($.map(categories[i].items,function(elem){
        return {value:elem.itemId, label:elem.name};
    }));
} 
console.log(items); //prints []

Expected Result

[{
   label: "Item1",
   value: "1"
},
{
   label: "Item2",
   value: "2"
},{
   label: "Item3",
   value: "3"
},{
   label: "Item4",
   value: "4"
}

I feel as if I am missing something very basic. I logged the result of the $.map function and it appears to be returning an []. Can anyone figure out the issue?

JSFiddle: http://jsfiddle.net/vymJv/

Answer 1

updated with flatMap(not compatible with IE)

categories.flatMap((categories) => categories.items)

flatMap() method returns a new array formed by applying a given callback function to each element of the array, and then flattening the result by one level.

Answer 2

  const items = categories
          .map(category => category.items)
          .reduce((prev, current) => [...prev, ...current])
          .map((e, i) => ({ label: e.name, value: e.itemId }));