Maps and WeakMaps with ES6

[00:00] Today we're going to do an introductory overview of maps and weakMaps with ECMAScript 2015 or ES6. The map object is just a simple key value map. JavaScript objects and maps are very similar to each other, and before the introduction of maps in ES6, objects were used in order to keep track of different key value pairs.

[00:22] However, maps does offer us a few bonuses that we don't get from objects. For example, an object has a prototype, so by default, there are keys in the map whether the user has added them or not. Secondly, an object key has to be a string, whereas in a map, it can be anything from a function, to an object, to all other types of primitives.

[00:42] Lastly, maps have methods on them that allow you to easily get the size of and keep track of the size of your map, whereas to objects, there's no innate method that allows you to quickly get those answers.

[00:55] The first thing that we want to do is inside of our JSBin, just go ahead and make a map. We'll just do, "var myMap = new Map()." Next, let's list out the API that we'll be going over in this tutorial. We have the set method and then the get method, followed by the size property, as well as the clear and has method.

[01:16] First thing we want to do is go ahead and set some key value pairs on our new map. To do that, we'll take advantage of the set method. We'll just do myMap.set with a key of "foo" and a value of "bar" followed myMap.set with a key of "hello" followed by a value of "world."

[01:34] To get an idea of what the get method does, let's go ahead and just console.log out myMap.get(foo). If we come over to our console and we run this, we'll notice that "bar" is returned. That's because that is the value associated with the foo key inside of our map. If we attempt to access a value that does not exist, we'll get "undefined" back.

[01:53] Next, let's go ahead and look at the size property that we have available to us. If we console.log out myMap.size() and go ahead and run the console again, we'll see that two is returned to us because we have two items inside of our map.

[02:06] The clear method is quite self-explanatory. If we go ahead and insert a myMap.clear() above the console.log, we'll see when we run the output, we get zero back, because there's no longer any items in our map.

[02:18] Next, Let's look at the has method available to us through the map API. If you go ahead and write has with an argument of foo, we'll see that true is returned back. If we insert a key that does not exist, such as qwerty, and go ahead and run that, we'll see that false is returned back.

[02:34] Map gives us several iterators that we can use to go over our map to access the keys, values, and entries. Those are the keys method, the entries method, and the values method. To get an idea of what that looks like, let's go ahead and create a for-of loop in here, and we'll do var keyOf = myMap.keys, and we'll console.log out each key.

[02:54] If we clear the console and run it again, we'll see that we get "foo" and "hello" returned to us, because those are the two keys inside of our map.

[03:02] Alternatively, we can go ahead and do a for-of loop for the values inside of our map. Let's go ahead and switch the variables so it makes a little more sense, and we'll console.log that out. We'll see that "bar" and "world" is returned to use, because those are the values that are stored within our map.

[03:17] Lastly, we can iterate over the entries. What the entries does is it returns to us an array made of arrays where the first item in the array is the key and the second item is the value. If we do var key and value of myMap.entries and console.log that out, we'll see that we get "foo = bar" and "hello = world."

[03:39] Next, I wanted to quickly go over weakMaps in ES6. What a weakMap means is that no references are held to the keys of the map. With no references being held to the keys of the map, it allows it to be available for automatic garbage collection that's available to us in JavaScript.

[03:56] Because no references are kept to the keys, that means that they are innumerable, or we cannot iterate over them. Because of this, the options of what is available for us to use as keys in our map is limited when using weakMaps.

[04:07] For example, with a map, we can use anything as its key. To show that, let's create var myObject, set it equal to an empty object. Var myFunction, set it equal to an anonymous function.

[04:20] Now, in our set methods, we can swap out foo and hello for myObject and myFunction. We can run our output and see that the entries method shows us that we have our object and our function as the keys for var and world.

[04:33] The important thing to note is that we can also use strings for our keys. We can say set string with a value of two. We can run our output again, and we'll see that string two is given back to us as a key value store.

[04:45] If we go up here, and we change var myMap to a weakMap, and we run this again, we'll see that we get some errors. The first thing we get is that we cannot use a string as a key in our weakMap. If we go ahead and get rid of that string and run the output again, we'll see that we get a new error.

[05:01] This time, we see that entries is not a function. Because of the enumerable nature of our weakMaps, that means that all of these iterator API methods available to us on the map is no longer available on the weakMap.