This will be a post on the lodash thru method that is one of several useful methods when working with a chain in lodash. The other useful method to take into account would be the lodash tap method that I wrote a post on earlier this month as I take a moment to expand on lodash, and edit some older posts on the topic too while I am at it. There is also the question of how to even go about starting a chain in lodash to begin with, when it comes to that there is the main lodash function, as well as the lodash chain method.

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Continuing with a digital art collection of javaScript examples I have made yet another quick project following the same general thought process with the others when it comes to sticking with a fairly simple idea, and getting the core of that idea done within the span of just few days. This time I wanted to make a digital art project that involves display objects that repentants fixed structures that spawn at the center of the canvas, and additional display objects that spawn from outside the canvas and move in to where the buildings are to attack and destroy these structures. The structures themselves also fight back, and both kinds of display units fire yet another kind of display object that is a shot object at each other. So then this digital art project is then something that resembles a kind of game, but because it is a digital art project that means I do not have to worry about UI design, save states, menus, and all kinds of additional features that I would need to work out of it where a game. This allows me to focus more so on just game logic, and also how the project looks as this is a digital art project.

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This month I have been focusing on lodash, mostly in terms of editing my older content on the subject, but also writing a few new posts where and when I think doing so is needed. With that said I have not wrote a post centered around the subject of collections, and so called collection methods and how they compare to say arrays methods in lodash. So in todays post the focal point will be collections, the various methods in lodash that work with collections, and also how to work with collections in general outside of lodash when it comes to working with javaScript by itself.

When it comes to arrays in javaScript and array can be though of as a kind of collection, this is because an array is zero or more elements and each element is often of a given type. When it comes to regular javaScript arrays any element can be any given type, but there are also typed arrays where all elements are a single type. However anyway each element in the array typically has some kind of shared significance that is relevant to an over all problem, and this array needs to be acted on with various kinds of methods that preform actions on this array such a filtering. When it comes to the structure of javaScript arrays, an array is a kind of object in javaScript, each key is numbered rather than named, and there is a length property of the array that is the current capacity of the array. There is then creating an object that is structured this way using for example the Object literal syntax, as such it is an object that is just like an array in terms of the own properties of the object, but it is not an instance of the array class, thus does not have array prototype methods at the ready to work with. There is then creating another kind of object that is also just like this kind of object in terms of the values for each key, but the keys are named rather than numbered, and there is no length property. These kinds of objects may differ from an array a little, but they can still be thought of as a kind of collection.

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Over the last few days I was working on yet another one of my javaScript examples this time it is yet another Digital Art Projects based off of revision 5 of my first Object Pool Reduction digital art example that I started late last year. This time around I wanted to make a quick project that was just a bunch of display objects moving around the canvas, each of which also contains a collection of points that form a star. However this is not just any star, but a kind of unsteady star that has more than one collection of points attached to it. One collection of points is a bunch of home points that are the pure position locations for each point in the star, then other collections of points have to do with old, target, and current positions. So then the points move from the home positions to random positions that are a certain random radius and angle from each home position. So then simply put they end up being collections of points that look like stars but the points will move around to these random locations within a range of each home point.

The main goal of this project was not just to create yet another digital art project, but also to continue to practice and refine the basic process that I started with in my first digital art javaScript example project. That is to come up with what the Core idea of a project is first, finish that, then move on to a few additional features. Also when it comes to additional features set a limit as to how many of them there will be, and try to focus on what I really want or need to add to the project. Then onces the few features are done, sop adding features and focus on code readability and fixing bugs. This kind of process combined with sticking to simple, artful projects will then result in me actually finishing a project, and then I will be free to move on to the next idea. With that said I would say that the main goal of this project was a success, now it is just doing the same of the next project, and the project after that. Keeping the ides simple and in the scope of something that I can complete in a few days, or at most a month if it is something that is a little involves.

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When working with a chain of methods in lodash there might end up being one or more instances in which I will want to just tap off of the chain at some point, mutate a collection, and then continue on with the chain of methods. The main method of interest with this would be the lodash tap method that can be called off of a chain at any moment to just do something that involves mutating the collection in place. This tap method works by using a value as the first argument and calling an interceptor function as the second argument, the return value of the tap method is then also the given value as well.

There are some other lodash methods that are worth mentioning such as the lodah flow method that might be a better alternative to using the lodash chain method to begin with. Also there is maybe a few things to write about when it comes to doing similar things with javaScript by itself also.

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