JSPM

About

This module provides functions equivalent to Array.prototype.find and Array.prototype.indexOf, but for finding the closest value where an exact match may not exist.

Installation

npm install find-closest

API

findClosest(array, valueToFind)

import findClosest from 'find-closest';

findClosest([0, 10, 20], 12);
// returns 10

findClosest(array, valueToFind, [valueGetter])

import findClosest from 'find-closest';

const people = [
    {name: 'Bob', age: 20},
    {name: 'Laura', age: 16}
];
const getAge = ({age}) => age;

findClosest(people, 17, getAge);
// returns the object for Laura

createFindClosest(getDistance)

findClosest works for numbers. However, you may make other comparisons by creating a custom function with createFindClosest.

Pass a function to createFindClosest which calculates the distance between a value from the array and the expected value. The function should return a number, with a minimum value of 0. The better the match, the lower the number should be.

Basic example

import {createFindClosest} from 'find-closest';

const getDistance = (name, lengthToFind) =>
    Math.abs(name.length - lengthToFind)

const findClosestLength = createFindClosest(getDistance);

findClosestLength(['Bob', 'Laura', 'Timothy'], 10);
// returns 'Timothy'

Plugging in third party modules

It's simple to use a third-party module to calculate what "close" means. This example uses the "fast-levenshtein" module (installed via npm) to calculate the similarity between strings.

import {createFindClosest} from 'find-closest';
import levenshtein from 'fast-levenshtein';

const findClosestWord = createFindClosest(levenshtein.get);

findClosestWord(['Bob', 'Jo', 'Tim'], 'Rob');
// returns 'Bob'

findClosestIndex(array, valueToFind, [valueGetter])

Like findClosest, except it returns the index instead of the value from the array.

createFindClosestIndex(getDistance)

Like createFindClosest, except the created function returns the index instead of the value from the array.