Remove duplicate objects from an array using javascript

I see, the problem there is that the complexity is squared. There is one trick to do it, it's simply by using "Associative arrays".

You can get the array, loop over it, and add the value of the array as a key to the associative array. Since it doesn't allow duplicated keys, you will automatically get rid of the duplicates.

Since you are looking for title and artist when comparing, you can actually try to use something like:

var arrResult = {};
for (i = 0, n = arr.length; i < n; i++) {
    var item = arr[i];
    arrResult[ item.title + " - " + item.artist ] = item;
}

Then you just loop the arrResult again, and recreate the array.

var i = 0;
var nonDuplicatedArray = [];    
for(var item in arrResult) {
    nonDuplicatedArray[i++] = arrResult[item];
}

Updated to include Paul's comment. Thanks!

Here is a solution that works for me.

Helper functions:

// sorts an array of objects according to one field
// call like this: sortObjArray(myArray, "name" );
// it will modify the input array
sortObjArray = function(arr, field) {
    arr.sort(
        function compare(a,b) {
            if (a[field] < b[field])
                return -1;
            if (a[field] > b[field])
                return 1;
            return 0;
        }
    );
}

// call like this: uniqueDishes = removeDuplicatesFromObjArray(dishes, "dishName");
// it will NOT modify the input array
// input array MUST be sorted by the same field (asc or desc doesn't matter)
removeDuplicatesFromObjArray = function(arr, field) {
    var u = [];
    arr.reduce(function (a, b) {
        if (a[field] !== b[field]) u.push(b);
        return b;
    }, []);
    return u;
}

and then simply call:

        sortObjArray(dishes, "name");
        dishes = removeDuplicatesFromObjArray(dishes, "name");

Basic sort-then-unique implementation, fiddle HERE:

function unique(arr) {
    var comparer = function compareObject(a, b) {
        if (a.title == b.title) {
            if (a.artist < b.artist) {
                return -1;
            } else if (a.artist > b.artist) {
                return 1;
            } else {
                return 0;
            }
        } else {
            if (a.title < b.title) {
                return -1;
            } else {
                return 1;
            }
        }
    }

    arr.sort(comparer);
    console.log("Sorted: " + JSON.stringify(arr));
    for (var i = 0; i < arr.length - 1; ++i) {
        if (comparer(arr[i], arr[i+1]) === 0) {
            arr.splice(i, 1);
            console.log("Splicing: " + JSON.stringify(arr));
        }
    }
    return arr;
}

It may or may not be the most efficient, and should be entirely scalable. I've added some console.logs so you can see it as it works.

EDIT

In the interest of saving on the space the function used, I did that for loop at the end, but it seems likely that didn't properly find only unique results (depsite it passing my simple jsfiddle test). Please try replacing my for loop with the following:

var checker;
var uniqueResults = [];
for (var i = 0; i < arr.length; ++i) {
    if (!checker || comparer(checker, arr[i]) != 0) {
        checker = arr[i];
        uniqueResults.push(checker);
    }
}
return uniqueResults;

I use this function. its not doing any sorting, but produces result. Cant say about performance as never measure it.

var unique = function(a){
    var seen = [], result = [];
    for(var len = a.length, i = len-1; i >= 0; i--){
        if(!seen[a[i]]){
            seen[a[i]] = true;
            result.push(a[i]);
        }
    }
    return result;
}

var ar = [1,2,3,1,1,1,1,1,"", "","","", "a", "b"]; console.log(unique(ar));// this will produce [1,2,3,"", "a", "b"] all unique elements.