How to use ES6 Fat Arrow to .filter() an array of objects

It appears I cannot use an if statement.

Arrow functions either allow to use an expression or a block as their body. Passing an expression

foo => bar

is equivalent to the following block

foo => { return bar; }

However,

if (person.age > 18) person

is not an expression, if is a statement. Hence you would have to use a block, if you wanted to use if in an arrow function:

foo => {  if (person.age > 18) return person; }

---

While that technically solves the problem, this a confusing use of .filter, because it suggests that you have to return the value that should be contained in the output array. However, the callback passed to .filter should return a Boolean, i.e. true or false, indicating whether the element should be included in the new array or not.

So all you need is

family.filter(person => person.age > 18);

In ES5:

family.filter(function (person) {
  return person.age > 18;
});

You can't implicitly return with an if, you would need the braces:

let adults = family.filter(person => { if (person.age > 18) return person} );

It can be simplified though:

let adults = family.filter(person => person.age > 18);