Sort Array by Occurrences (JS/TS)

How to sort the items in an array by the number of their occurrences

1 minute read

Code Snippet ->

Ascending (from the least frequent to the most frequent):

const sortByOccurrences = (items: string[]) => {
  const all: Record<string, number> = {}

  items.forEach((item) => {
    all[item] = all[item] ? all[item] + 1 : 1
  })

  const sorted = Object.fromEntries(
    Object.entries(all).sort(([, a], [, b]) => a - b)
  )

  return Object.keys(sorted)
}

const items = ['apple', 'pear', 'apple', 'orange', 'apple', 'pear']
// 3x apple, 2x pear, 1x orange

console.log(sortByOccurrences(items))
// ['orange', 'pear', 'apple']

Descending (from the most frequent to the least frequent):

const sortByOccurrences = (items: string[]) => {
  const all: Record<string, number> = {}

  items.forEach((item) => {
    all[item] = all[item] ? all[item] + 1 : 1
  })

  const sorted = Object.fromEntries(
    Object.entries(all).sort(([, a], [, b]) => a - b)
  )

  return Object.keys(sorted)
}

const items = ['apples', 'bananas', 'bananas', 'bananas', 'oranges', 'oranges']
// 3x apple, 2x pear, 1x orange

console.log(sortByOccurrences(items))
// ['apple', 'pear', 'orange']

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