JavaScript Katas: Missing values

2020-08-06

Intro 🌐

Problem solving is an important skill, for your career and your life in general.

That's why I take interesting katas of all levels, customize them and explain how to solve them.

Understanding the Exercise❗

First, we need to understand the exercise! If you don't understand it, you can't solve it!.

My personal method:

Input: What do I put in?
Output: What do I want to get out?

Today's exercise

Today, another 7 kyu kata, meaning we slightly increase the difficulty.

Source: Codewars

Write a function missingValues, that accepts one parameter: myArray.

Given an array of number, e.g. [1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3],

find:

the number x, that appears once, e.g. 3
the number y, that appears twice, e.g. 2

and return the product x _ x _ y, e.g. 18 (=> 3 x 3 x 2).

Input: an array of numbers.

Output: a number.

Thinking about the Solution 💭

I think I understand the exercise (= what I put into the function and what I want to get out of it).

Now, I need the specific steps to get from input to output.

I try to do this in small baby steps:

Find the number that appears once, x
Find the number that appears twice, y
Return the product of x * x * y

Example:

Input: [1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3]
Find the number that appears once, x: 3
Find the number that appears twice, y: 2
Return the product of x * x * y: 18 (=> 3 x 3 x 2)
Output: 18 ✅

Implementation ⛑

function missingValues(myArray) {
  // count amount of each number
  const count = myArray.reduce(
    (acc, cur) =>
      acc.hasOwnProperty(cur)
        ? { ...acc, [cur]: acc[cur] + 1 }
        : { ...acc, [cur]: 1 },
    {}
  );

  // helper function to find the object key (= our number) that appears [amount] times
  const appears = (amount) =>
    Object.entries(count)
      .filter(([key, value]) => value === amount)
      .map((entry) => entry[0]);

  return appears(1) * appears(1) * appears(2);
}

Result

console.log([1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3]);
// 18 ✅

console.log([6, 5, 4, 100, 6, 5, 4, 100, 6, 5, 4, 200]);
// 4000000 ✅

Playground ⚽

You can play around with the code here

Next Part ➡️

Great work!

We learned how to use reduce, filter, map, hasOwnProperty, Object.entries.

I hope you can use your new learnings to solve problems more easily!

Next time, we'll solve another interesting kata. Stay tuned!

If I should solve a specific kata, shoot me a message here.

If you want to read my latest stuff, get in touch with me!

Questions ❔

How often do you do katas?
Which implementation do you like more? Why?
Any alternative solution?

miku86