The most basic type of iteration method in JavaScript is the for loop. It takes three expressions; a variable declaration, an expression to be evaluated before each iteration, and an expression to be evaluated at the end of each iteration. For example, this for loop will console.log each item in an array.

const array = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']; for (let i = 0; i < array.length; i++) { console.log(array[i]); } // Result: a, b, c, d

In addition to this for loop, there are two other types of for iteration methods we can use: for..in and for..of .

The for..in Statement

for..in is a method for iterating over "enumerable" properties of an object. It therefore applies to all objects (not only Object() s) that have these properties.

An enumerable property is defined as a property of an object that has an Enumerable value of true. Essentially, a property is "enumerable", if it is enumerable . We can check if a property is enumerable by calling property.enumerable , which will return true or false.

We use the for..in loop with the following syntax -

for (variable in enumerable) { // do stuff }

For example, to loop through and console.log all the values in this Object, we can do the following -

const obj = { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3, d: 4 } for (const key in obj) { console.log( obj[key] ) } // Result: 1, 2, 3, 4

The for ... in loop will iterate over inherited properties as well, as long as they are enumerable properties. The for ... in iteration happens in an arbitrary order. Therefore, it should not be used if things need to happen in their defined sequence.

for..in and Objects

The for..in method provides us the most straightforward way to loop over Object keys and values, since Objects do not have access to the forEach method that Arrays do.

for..in and Arrays

The "key" for values in an Array are the numerical indexes. Therefore, these indexes are essentially just enumerable properties, like Object keys, except they are integers instead of strings.

This means that we can loop over all the values in an Array by retrieving their index using the for..in Array.

const array = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']; for (const index in array) { console.log(array[index]) } // Result: a, b, c, d

However, it is generally advised that for..in not be used with Arrays, particularly because it cannot be guaranteed that the iteration happens in sequence, which is usually important for Arrays.

for..in and Strings

Each character in a string has an index. Therefore, similar to Arrays, the indexes are enumerable properties that just happen to be integers.

const string = 'Ire Aderinokun'; for (const index in string) { console.log(string[index]) } // Result: I, r, e, , A, d, e, r, i, n, o, k, u, n

The for..of Statement

for..of is a method, introduced in ES2015, for iterating over "iterable collections". These are objects that have a [Symbol.iterator] property.

The [Symbol.iterator] property allows us to manually iterate over the collection by calling the [Symbol.iterator]().next() method to retrieve the next item in the collection.

const array = ['a','b','c', 'd']; const iterator = array[Symbol.iterator](); console.log( iterator.next().value ) console.log( iterator.next().value ) console.log( iterator.next().value ) console.log( iterator.next().value ) // Result: a, b, c, d

The for..of syntax is essentially a wrapper around the [Symbol.iterator] to create loops. It uses the following syntax -

for (variable of iterable) { // do stuff }

for..of and Objects

The for..of loop doesn't work with Objects because they are not "iterable", and therefore don't have a [Symbol.iterator] property.

for..of and Arrays/Strings

The for..of loop works well with Arrays and Strings, as they are iterable. This method is a more reliable way of looping through an Array in sequence.

const array = ['a', 'b', 'c', 'd']; for (const item of array) { console.log(item) } // Result: a, b, c, d const string = 'Ire Aderinokun'; for (const character of string) { console.log(character) } // Result: I, r, e, , A, d, e, r, i, n, o, k, u, n

for..of and NodeLists

Finally, another really useful case for for..of is in iterating of NodeLists. When we query the document for a group of elements, what we get returned is a NodeList, not an Array. This means that we can't iterate over the list using Array methods like forEach .

To solve this, we can either convert it to an Array using Array.from() , or use the for..of loop, which is applicable to more than just Arrays.

const elements = document.querySelectorAll('.foo'); for (const element of elements) { element.addEventListener('click', doSomething); }

A Comparison

for..in for..of Applies to Enumerable Properties Iterable Collections Use with Objects? Yes No Use with Arrays? Yes, but not advised Yes Use with Strings? Yes, but not advised Yes

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