Array.prototype.at

By  on  

Working with arrays is an essential skill in any programming language, especially JavaScript, as we continue to rely on external data APIs. JavaScript has added methods like find and `findIndex recently, but one syntax I love from languages like Python is retrieving values by negative indexes.

When you want to get the value of the last item in an array, you end up with an archaic expression:

const arr = ["zero", "one", "two", "three"];
const last = arr[arr.length - 1];

You could use pop but that modifies the array. Instead you can use at and an index, even a negative index, to retrieve values:

const arr = ["zero", "one", "two", "three"];
arr.at(-1); // "three"
arr.at(-2); // "two"
arr.at(0); // "zero"

at is a very little known function but useful, if only for the shorthand syntax!

Recent Features

  • By
    Create a CSS Flipping Animation

    CSS animations are a lot of fun; the beauty of them is that through many simple properties, you can create anything from an elegant fade in to a WTF-Pixar-would-be-proud effect. One CSS effect somewhere in between is the CSS flip effect, whereby there's...

  • By
    LightFace:  Facebook Lightbox for MooTools

    One of the web components I've always loved has been Facebook's modal dialog.  This "lightbox" isn't like others:  no dark overlay, no obnoxious animating to size, and it doesn't try to do "too much."  With Facebook's dialog in mind, I've created LightFace:  a Facebook lightbox...

Incredible Demos

  • By
    MooTools Clipboard Plugin

    The ability to place content into a user's clipboard can be extremely convenient for the user. Instead of clicking and dragging down what could be a lengthy document, the user can copy the contents of a specific area by a single click of a mouse.

  • By
    Create a Spinning, Zooming Effect with CSS3

    In case you weren't aware, CSS animations are awesome.  They're smooth, less taxing than JavaScript, and are the future of node animation within browsers.  Dojo's mobile solution, dojox.mobile, uses CSS animations instead of JavaScript to lighten the application's JavaScript footprint.  One of my favorite effects...

Discussion

    Wrap your code in <pre class="{language}"></pre> tags, link to a GitHub gist, JSFiddle fiddle, or CodePen pen to embed!