How to group an array of objects by key

Question

In plain Javascript, you could use Array#reduce with an object

var cars = [{ make: 'audi', model: 'r8', year: '2012' }, { make: 'audi', model: 'rs5', year: '2013' }, { make: 'ford', model: 'mustang', year: '2012' }, { make: 'ford', model: 'fusion', year: '2015' }, { make: 'kia', model: 'optima', year: '2012' }],
    result = cars.reduce(function (r, a) {
        r[a.make] = r[a.make] || [];
        r[a.make].push(a);
        return r;
    }, Object.create(null));

console.log(result);

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Timo's answer is how I would do it. Simple _.groupBy, and allow some duplications in the objects in the grouped structure.

However the OP also asked for the duplicate make keys to be removed. If you wanted to go all the way:

var grouped = _.mapValues(_.groupBy(cars, 'make'),
                          clist => clist.map(car => _.omit(car, 'make')));

console.log(grouped);

Yields:

{ audi:
   [ { model: 'r8', year: '2012' },
     { model: 'rs5', year: '2013' } ],
  ford:
   [ { model: 'mustang', year: '2012' },
     { model: 'fusion', year: '2015' } ],
  kia: 
   [ { model: 'optima', year: '2012' } ] 
}

If you wanted to do this using Underscore.js, note that its version of _.mapValues is called _.mapObject.

You are looking for _.groupBy().

Removing the property you are grouping by from the objects should be trivial if required:

var cars = [{'make':'audi','model':'r8','year':'2012'},{'make':'audi','model':'rs5','year':'2013'},{'make':'ford','model':'mustang','year':'2012'},{'make':'ford','model':'fusion','year':'2015'},{'make':'kia','model':'optima','year':'2012'},];

var grouped = _.groupBy(cars, function(car) {
  return car.make;
});

console.log(grouped);

<script src='https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/lodash/4.17.2/lodash.min.js'></script>

---

As a bonus, you get even nicer syntax with ES6 arrow functions:

const grouped = _.groupBy(cars, car => car.make);

There is absolutely no reason to download a 3rd party library to achieve this simple problem, like the above solutions suggest.

The one line version to group a list of objects by a certain key in es6:

const groupByKey = (list, key) => list.reduce((hash, obj) => ({...hash, [obj[key]]:( hash[obj[key]] || [] ).concat(obj)}), {})

The longer version that filters out the objects without the key:

function groupByKey(array, key) {
   return array
     .reduce((hash, obj) => {
       if(obj[key] === undefined) return hash; 
       return Object.assign(hash, { [obj[key]]:( hash[obj[key]] || [] ).concat(obj)})
     }, {})
}


var cars = [{'make':'audi','model':'r8','year':'2012'},{'make':'audi','model':'rs5','year':'2013'},{'make':'ford','model':'mustang','year':'2012'},{'make':'ford','model':'fusion','year':'2015'},{'make':'kia','model':'optima','year':'2012'}];

console.log(groupByKey(cars, 'make'))

NOTE: It appear the original question asks how to group cars by make, but omit the make in each group. So the short answer, without 3rd party libraries, would look like this:

const groupByKey = (list, key, {omitKey=false}) => list.reduce((hash, {[key]:value, ...rest}) => ({...hash, [value]:( hash[value] || [] ).concat(omitKey ? {...rest} : {[key]:value, ...rest})} ), {})

var cars = [{'make':'audi','model':'r8','year':'2012'},{'make':'audi','model':'rs5','year':'2013'},{'make':'ford','model':'mustang','year':'2012'},{'make':'ford','model':'fusion','year':'2015'},{'make':'kia','model':'optima','year':'2012'}];

console.log(groupByKey(cars, 'make', {omitKey:true}))

Here is your very own groupBy function which is a generalization of the code from: https://github.com/you-dont-need/You-Dont-Need-Lodash-Underscore

function groupBy(xs, f) {
  return xs.reduce((r, v, i, a, k = f(v)) => ((r[k] || (r[k] = [])).push(v), r), {});
}

const cars = [{ make: 'audi', model: 'r8', year: '2012' }, { make: 'audi', model: 'rs5', year: '2013' }, { make: 'ford', model: 'mustang', year: '2012' }, { make: 'ford', model: 'fusion', year: '2015' }, { make: 'kia', model: 'optima', year: '2012' }];

const result = groupBy(cars, (c) => c.make);
console.log(result);

var cars = [{
  make: 'audi',
  model: 'r8',
  year: '2012'
}, {
  make: 'audi',
  model: 'rs5',
  year: '2013'
}, {
  make: 'ford',
  model: 'mustang',
  year: '2012'
}, {
  make: 'ford',
  model: 'fusion',
  year: '2015'
}, {
  make: 'kia',
  model: 'optima',
  year: '2012'
}].reduce((r, car) => {

  const {
    model,
    year,
    make
  } = car;

  r[make] = [...r[make] || [], {
    model,
    year
  }];

  return r;
}, {});

console.log(cars);

Its also possible with a simple for loop:

 const result = {};

 for(const {make, model, year} of cars) {
   if(!result[make]) result[make] = [];
   result[make].push({ model, year });
 }