Tag: Javascript

I recently came across (yet another) situation where I needed to work with a text-based ranking system. You know, when some gem decided to create a ranking system like good, great, awesome, spectacular and then we need to store each user’s highest level of achievement over a period.

This occurs with surprising regularity in my work, most often when needing to work with spreadsheet data that a user has created. We can’t really change the data on the spreadsheet so we need to handle this with some code instead.

Not ideal, I know. We could complain about it ad nauseam or simply live with it and deal with it using some JavaScript magic.

In this tutorial, we will cover two approaches to this. Both approaches have their own uses. We will go over a few use cases so you get an idea of when these sorts of things come up.

Let’s get cracking.

Note: Sometimes it takes a couple of examples to figure out a concept. Other times, you can figure it out in an instant. Feel free to read as much as you need to understand the concept. 

 

Storing the most important text value with JavaScript

Example 1: Recording the best poker hand

Let’s say I am having a poker night with some friends and want to only record my best hand for the night, you know, to brag later.

First, we should list all the poker hands from best to worst:

1. Royal flush
2. Straight flush
3. Four of a kind
4. Full house
5. Flush
6. Straight
7. Three of a kind
8. Two pairs
9. Pair
10. High Card

As the night starts, my first hand was a ‘three of a kind’. So I make a note. Then, I only get a ‘pair’ for my next hand. I’m not writing that down. It’s worse. Next, I get a ‘flush’. Awesome, a ‘flush’ is better than a ‘three of a kind’, so I will store that one and put a line through my previous record.

Do you get the picture?

Cool. Let’s write some code.

We will need to store our list of poker hands in order and also create a variable to store the best hand we get during the game. We have two choices here. I will go through both and then discuss performance.

Storing data as an array

So what’s going on?

First, we store our list of all possible poker hands in an array called ‘poker’. Starting with the lowest hand on the left and finishing with the best hand on the right (bottom of the array). Lines 1-12

Arrays in JavaScript maintain their order so we know that “High Card” will always be in position poker[0] and “Royal Flush” will be in position poker[9]. We will be using the array’s order in a minute to check if we should be storing our next hand or not.

Next, we need a place to store our highest hand for the night. We set the variable bestHand for this, using JavaScript ‘let’ variable declaration to allow us to change the variable as we update it with a better hand. Line 14

setMostImportant_Array()

We now create the function setMostImportant_Array(). This function takes 3 arguments:

1. The array or list to reference
2. The stored item, in our case, bestHand.
3. The new contender item, which may or may not, be better than the stored one.

The function returns the most important item. This is done with a simple ternary operator, which is a kind of simplified ‘if’ statement.

On line 5, we compare the position of our stored bestHand value in its position in the poker array list against the new hand. We do this by using the indexOf method which returns the first occurrence of the matching item in an array as an index of that array. If the current bestHand is greater than or equal to the new hand then we return the current bestHand. Otherwise, we return the new hand.

Testing the results.

After we have set up our function we can now run it. Our second hand of the night was a ‘pair’ so we updated our best hand to our function adding in, poker as our array list, bestHand as our stored item, and “Pair” as our new item.

bestHand = setMostImportant_Array(poker, bestHand, "Pair");

Because a pair is not as important as a ‘three of a kind’ we kept the current value.

On the next hand, we got a ‘Flush’ which is more valuable than a ‘Three of a kind’ so using our function again we see that bestHand now stores the ‘Flush’ as the most important value.

Storing Data as an object

We can achieve the same outcome by storing data as an object. Let’s take a look at the code.

In our poker object, we store the names of each hand as a property string and then each property’s value is its position or order of importance in the group of data. Lines 1-12

Our setMostImportant_Object() function is a lot simpler than the array function above. Here we will use our ternary operator, but this time we simply are checking to see if the bestHand property value stored in our poker object is greater than the new hand property value. Line 14-24

Our function takes on arguments in the same way as the array function and will store the new property in the bestHand variable if the hand is better than the one stored.

Which is better? The array or object approach?

The most predictable and irritating answer first. It depends.

Running a benchmark test on the two they are fairly comparable, but over larger sets of stored ranked text, the object approach would perform better.

However, my preference would slant to the array approach if my ranking is not static. This is probably a rare case, but imagine if your text-based ranking system changes regularly and you need to update the order of you ranking system.

Moving your data around an array and cutting it out of one position and putting it in another is fairly simple with an array. With an object, however, we need to update the current value of the property that is going to change and then move all the other properties around than need to change. This would definitely be more memory intensive and harder to code.

Here is an example.

Example 2: Getting the best commodity in a fluctuating market

Imagine that we are investing in a fictional commodity market. As supply and demand fluctuate, a commodities value may move to become greater or lesser than other commodities in the same market.

Our goal in this scenario is to keep the best value commodity available to us. If the commodity’s value position compared to other commodities shifts, then we need to ensure that we always keep the best commodity available to us.

Let’s use this fictional list of commodities as our example:

1. tryzatium << currently lowest value.
2. ocoumbre
3. malcatite
4. enzome
5. parl
6. obvoster << currently highest value

We are first presented with the opportunity to buy ocoumbre. Having no investments in the market, we make the purchase.

Our next opportunity is to purchase tryzatium. Currently, this item is less valuable than ocoumbre so we won’t buy it.

Enzome comes up next. Being of higher value, we purchase it and sell off our ocoumbre. 

Then the next day the market changes.  A new large deposit of enzome is found and floods the market, reducing its value to below tryzatium. So when we get an offer to buy malacite we jump at it.

Let’s write some simple code to simulate this.

storing data in a fluctuating ranking system

The results of which should appear like this:

Just like in the first example, when a better commodity is presented to us we replace it with our current commodity. When there is a change to the order of the market, then we also see a change in how we prioritise what we keep.

moveItem()

The moveItem() function allows us to change the order of priority of our list of commodities.

The function takes 3 arguments as parameters:

1. list – the array of ordered items. In the example, this is our commoditiyByVal array.
2. item – This is the item in the list that needs to change position.
3. newIdx – The new index or place in the list that the item needs to move to.

In the first task of the function, we need to get the current index of the item. We do this by finding its index in the array with the indexOf method. Line 8

Next, we use the JavaScript splice method to cut the item out of the array (The inner splice) and then add it back into the array at the desired location (The outer splice). Line 9

The outer splice takes 3 arguments:

splice(start index, deleteCount, item to add)

1. start index – our new index for the position of the item.
2. delete count – the number of items to delete. For us, this is zero. We only want to add an item.
3. item to add – This will be the item that we splice out. Not only does splice update an existing array, but it can also return the items that have been removed as an array. This is handy for us because we will use them in this last argument. This inner splice takes two arguments:
   1. start index – the current index of our selected item.
   2. delete count – one, the current item we need to move from the existing position.

Why I recently needed to store the most important item in a list in JavaScript?

Example 3: Time Trigger (Cron Job) efficiency

So the thing that actually compelled me to write about this was a part of a Google Apps Script project – Google Apps Script is built on Google’s V8 engine for EcmaScript  JavaScript.

I was fetching requests from an external API that requested that an event be triggered at a particular interval. We use Clock Triggers in Google Apps Script but you might know them as Cron Jobs.

The API contained a list of text-based triggers that looked a little like this:

1. “daily”,
2. “6 hours”,
3. “1 hour”,
4. “30 minutes”,
5. “1 minute”

Anyway, we have limitations and quotas to how many clock triggers we have running in one account at one time so I always try and limit these. So if I can set a daily trigger for a user I will prefer it over a 1-minute trigger so that they don’t get any quota errors or issues.

In my example, when a user requires a trigger to be set for a project at a certain interval, the code will check against the current setting of all existing triggers for the project and update the trigger accordingly.

So for example, if a user sets their first project item to run every six hours, then the trigger will only run every six hours. If they add another item that needs to be run daily then that item will be initiated every fourth time the trigger is run ( 4 x 6 = 24 hours).

However, if they create a third item that requires it to be run every 30 minutes then we need the change the frequency that the trigger is called to 30-minute intervals. This means that the first item needs to be invoked every 12th occasion the 30-minute trigger is run (6 x 2 = 12). Likewise, the daily trigger needs to be invoked every 48th time the trigger is run (24 hrs x 2).

Let’s see how this looks in the code:

The code

Conclusion

I’d love to hear if you have some examples of when you might need to handle text-based ordering systems and what approach you took. Feel free to add them in the comments below.

If you have found the tutorial helpful, why not shout me a coffee ☕? I'd really appreciate it.

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~Yagi