How to count duplicate value in an array in javascript

const counts = {};
const sampleArray = ['a', 'a', 'b', 'c'];
sampleArray.forEach(function (x) { counts[x] = (counts[x] || 0) + 1; });
console.log(counts)

Something like this:

uniqueCount = ["a","b","c","d","d","e","a","b","c","f","g","h","h","h","e","a"];
var count = {};
uniqueCount.forEach(function(i) { count[i] = (count[i]||0) + 1;});
console.log(count);

Use a simple for loop instead of forEach if you don't want this to break in older browsers.


I stumbled across this (very old) question. Interestingly the most obvious and elegant solution (imho) is missing: Array.prototype.reduce(...). All major browsers support this feature since about 2011 (IE) or even earlier (all others):

var arr = ['a','b','c','d','d','e','a','b','c','f','g','h','h','h','e','a'];
var map = arr.reduce(function(prev, cur) {
  prev[cur] = (prev[cur] || 0) + 1;
  return prev;
}, {});

// map is an associative array mapping the elements to their frequency:
console.log(map);
// prints {"a": 3, "b": 2, "c": 2, "d": 2, "e": 2, "f": 1, "g": 1, "h": 3}

EDIT:

By using the comma operator in an arrow function, we can write it in one single line of code:

var arr = ['a','b','c','d','d','e','a','b','c','f','g','h','h','h','e','a'];
var map = arr.reduce((cnt, cur) => (cnt[cur] = cnt[cur] + 1 || 1, cnt), {});

// map is an associative array mapping the elements to their frequency:
console.log(map);
// prints {"a": 3, "b": 2, "c": 2, "d": 2, "e": 2, "f": 1, "g": 1, "h": 3}

However, as this may be harder to read/understand, one should probably stick to the first version.