New JavaScript Features To Get Ready For

ECMAScript2019 (ES10) is fast approaching. Features are moving into Stage 4, which is the final stage, and so we have some cool things to look forward to. Here’s what we know about so far.

Features in ECMAScript2019 (ES10)

Array.prototype.flat

A method that creates a new array with all sub-array elements concatenated into it recursively up to the specified depth.

const array = [1, 2, [3, 4]];
array.flat(); // [1, 2, 3, 4];

When you want to flatten your nested array, you’ll find this to be very helpful. If the depth of your array is deeper than one depth, calling flat once can’t entirely flatten your array. flat takes a parameter for depth, which refers to how many depths you want it to go into to flatten the array.

// Extreme!!! example
const crazyArray = [1, 2, [3, 4], [[5], [6, [7,8]]]];
crazyArray.flat(Infinity); // [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8];
// The parameter must be a typeOf Number

The deeper you want to search the array, the more computing time will be required to flatten it. Note that IEs and Edge do not support this feature.

Array.prototype.flatMap

A method first maps each element using a mapping function, then flattens the result into a new array.

const arr = ["it's Sunny in", "", "California"];
arr.flatMap(x => x.split(" "));
// ["it's","Sunny","in", "", "California"]

The difference between flat and flatMap is that you can put a custom function in flatMap to manipulate each value. Additionally, unlike flat, flatMap flattens one depth array, only. The return value should be an array type. This would be very useful when you should do something before flattening the array.

Click here if you want to know more features added to ES10.

Optional Chaining

This proposal goes with Nullish Coalescing for JavaScript, especially in TypeScript. TypeScript has announced that they will include Nullish Coalescing for JavaScript and this proposal in their next released version, 3.7.0.

const city = country && country.city; 
// undefined if city doesn't exist

Look at the example code. To get city, which is in country object, we should check if country exists and if city exists in country.

With Optional Chaining, this code can be refactored like this:

const city = country?.city; // undefined if city doesn't exist

This feature seems very handy and useful for this situation.

import { fetch } from '../yourFetch.js';
(async () => {
  const res = await fetch();
  // res && res.data && res.data.cities || undefined
  const cities = res?.data?.cities;
})();

Nullish Coalescing for JavaScript

This would be one of the most useful features amongst proposals in stage 3. We often wrote this kind of code.

const obj = { 
  name: 'James'
};
const name = obj.name || 'Jane'; // James

If obj.name is falsy, then return ‘Jane’, so undefined won’t be returned. But the problem is, an empty string(‘’) is also considered falsy in this case. Then we should rewrite it again like this below.

const name = (obj.name && obj.name !== '') ? obj.name : 'Jane';

It is a pain in the neck to write the code like that every time. This proposal allows you to check null and undefined only.

const response = {
  settings: {
    nullValue: null,
    height: 400,
    animationDuration: 0,
    headerText: '',
    showSplashScreen: false
  }
};

const undefinedValue = response.settings.undefinedValue ?? 'some other default'; // result: 'some other default'
const nullValue = response.settings.nullValue ?? 'some other default'; // result: 'some other default'
const headerText = response.settings.headerText ?? 'Hello, world!'; // result: ''
const animationDuration = response.settings.animationDuration ?? 300; // result: 0
const showSplashScreen = response.settings.showSplashScreen ?? true; // result: false

Features In Stage 3

In stage 3, there are a few features that might be interesting to have.

Numeric Separators

When you assigned a big number to a variable, weren’t you confused on how big that number is or if you wrote it right? This proposal allows you to put an underscore between numbers so you can count it easier.

1_000_000_000           // Ah, so a billion
101_475_938.38          // And this is hundreds of millions
let fee = 123_00;       // $123 (12300 cents, apparently)
let fee = 12_300;       // $12,300 (woah, that fee!)
let amount = 12345_00;  // 12,345 (1234500 cents, apparently)
let amount = 123_4500;  // 123.45 (4-fixed financial)
let amount = 1_234_500; // 1,234,500
let budget = 1_000_000_000_000;
// What is the value of `budget`? It's 1 trillion!
// 
// Let's confirm:
console.log(budget === 10 ** 12); // true

This feature could help you out when counting the size of a number.

Top-level await

Top-level await enables modules to act as big async functions: With top-level await, ECMAScript Modules (ESM) can await resources, causing other modules who import them to wait before they start evaluating their body.

The motivation of this feature was that when you import a module which has async function, the output of the async function is undefined.

// awaiting.mjs
import { process } from "./some-module.mjs";
const dynamic = import(computedModuleSpecifier);
const data = fetch(url);
export const output = process((await dynamic).default, await data);

There are two files. output could be undefined if it’s called before the Promises tasks are done.

// usage.mjs
import { output } from "./awaiting.mjs";
export function outputPlusValue(value) { return output + value }
console.log(outputPlusValue(100));
setTimeout(() => console.log(outputPlusValue(100), 1000);

usage.mjs will not execute any of the statements in it until the awaits in awaiting.mjs have had their Promises resolved.

Promise.any

Promise.any accepts an iterable of promises and returns a promise that is fulfilled by the first given promise to be fulfilled, or rejected with an array of rejection reasons if all of the given promises are rejected.

With async–await,

try {
  const first = await Promise.any(promises);
  // Any of the promises was fulfilled.
} catch (error) {
  // All of the promises were rejected.
}

With Promise pattern,

Promise.any(promises).then(
  (first) => {
    // Any of the promises was fulfilled.
  },
  (error) => {
    // All of the promises were rejected.
  }
);

Since there were Promise all, allSettled, and race, there wasn’t any. So this feature is simple but powerful for a needed situation.

However, this proposal wasn’t tested yet, so this proposal might have a longer time to be accepted in a future version of ECMAScript.

Conclusion

There are many interesting proposals in stage 3. They may not appear until ES11 or ES12. Obviously I won’t use all of them, and you probably won’t either. Some of them will be really helpful to have in our toolbelts, regardless of who we are.