Before starting my latest web-development project I was looking for some robust javascript frameworks that I could use.

I was familiar with AngularJS and I loved it, but it doesn’t have a lot of utility methods and I was looking for some solution to solve that problem.

So, I thought about using UnderscoreJS, which is a collection of utility methods with angularJS and I got myself a killer web development toolkit. In this blog post, I have summed up UnderscoreJS methods which I find useful. visit underscorejs.org to view all the available methods.

Using Underscore with Angular:

Combining angular and underscore is pretty straightforward, just add import underscore in your index.html, then add it as a service.

And then we could inject it into our controllers.

Useful Underscore methods:

I have compiled a list of my favourite underscoreJS methods, you can always visit underscorejs.org to view all the methods that are available in underscore.

_.isUndefined:

This method is used to determine whether the specified value is undefined or not, I know you could always do typeof value === “undefined” to check whether it is undefined or not, but I find this neater.

	_.isUndefined(value)
=>
(Returns a boolean value true/false)

_.defaults:

This is also a very useful method, it allows you to define default values for something if they are not present.

var data = {"model":"T", "manufacturer": "Ford", "price": "200"};
_.defaults(data, {"model":"N/A", "N/A": "Ford", "price": "0"})

output: ---> {"model":"T", "manufacturer": "Ford", "price": "200"}

_.defaults({},{"model":"N/A", "N/A": "Ford", "price": "0"})	
output: ---> {"model":"N/A", "N/A": "Ford", "price": "0"}

_.where:

This method comes handy when you want to search something in the array of objects using some attributes present in the object.
consider the example below.

var data = [{'model':"T", 'manufacturer':'Ford'},{'model':"P", 'manufacturer':'Ford'},{'model':"E", 'manufacturer':'Ford'},{'model':"a", 'manufacturer':'GM'},{'model':"g", 'manufacturer':'GM'}];
So,
_.where(list, properties) 
_.where(data, {'manufacturer':'ford'})
=>[{'model':"T", 'manufacturer':'Ford'},{'model':"P", 'manufacturer':'Ford'},{'model':"E", 'manufacturer':'Ford'}]

_.uniq:

This method operates on arrays, and it removes duplicates in the array.
Consider the following example:

_.uniq(array, [isSorted], [iteratee])

_.uniq(['Tim','Jon','Jim','Tim']);
=> ['Tim','Jon','Jim'];

_.pluck:

if you ever wanted to extract some values from an array of objects, well the pluck method let’s you do that.
Here is the example:

var people = [{name:'Joe', hobby:'baseball'}, {'Jane', hobby:'swimming'}, {'Tim', Hobby:'basketball'}, {'Duke', hobby:'cricket'}];

-.pluck(people,'name');
=>['Joe','Jane','Tim','Duke']

By merging these two awesome web development frameworks together we can get a pretty nice web development experience, as angular serves as an awesome MVC, and underscore provides a very useful collection of utility methods.

About me:

I am Mohammed Lakkadshaw. A freelance javascript developer with expertise in NodeJs Angular and React. If you like this article please share them on Twitter Facebook and Google+.