Total Cart Price: Solution Review

Solution review.

We'll cover the following

Getting Prices

Since point-free takes some getting used to, it can help to first write a plain solution and make it point-free later.

If you need a cart’s total price and each item’s shaped like this…

{
  name: 'apples',
  price: 2.49
}

…start by planning how you’d initially prepare the data. It’s a collection so map can get the prices and reduce can add them up for us.

index.js
cart.js
import cart from './cart';
const getTotalPrice = (items) => items
  .map((item) => item.price)
  .reduce((acc, value) => acc + value, 0)
const result = getTotalPrice(cart);
console.log({ result });

A Touch of Formatting

We’d like a dollar figure, so 36.410000000000004 should be $36.41.

index.js
cart.js
import cart from './cart';
const toUSD = (amount) => amount.toLocaleString('en-US', {
  style: 'currency',
  currency: 'USD',
});
  
const getTotalPrice = (items) => {
  const total = items
    .map((item) => item.price)
    .reduce((acc, value) => acc + value, 0);
  
  return toUSD(total);
};
const result = getTotalPrice(cart);
console.log({ result });

Refactoring to Point-Free

What were our steps?

  1. Get each price
  2. Add them up
  3. Format as dollars (USD)

We know pipe's great for multiple steps, so that’ll definitely help us get a point-free solution. And map/reduce are provided by Ramda.

index.js
cart.js
import { map, pipe, reduce } from 'ramda';
import cart from './cart';
const toUSD = (amount) => amount.toLocaleString('en-US', {
  style: 'currency',
  currency: 'USD',
});
const getTotalPrice = pipe(
  map((item) => item.price),
  reduce((acc, value) => acc + value, 0),
  toUSD
);
const result = getTotalPrice(cart);
console.log({ result });

Even though the map/reduce functions aren’t point-free, getTotalPrice is. This solution’s perfectly fine so pat yourself on the back if you got it.

We can make map/reduce point-free though. Ramda’s prop function grabs a given property of an object.

map(prop('price'))

And Ramda’s add function can be put inside reduce.

reduce(add, 0);
index.js
cart.js
import { add, map, pipe, prop, reduce } from 'ramda';
import cart from './cart';
const toUSD = (amount) => amount.toLocaleString('en-US', {
  style: 'currency',
  currency: 'USD',
});
const getTotalPrice = pipe(
  map(prop('price')),
  reduce(add, 0),
  toUSD
);
const result = getTotalPrice(cart);
console.log({ result });

Wait There’s More!

Plucking a property and summing a list are such common use cases that Ramda provides functions for them!

Check out pluck and sum.

https://ramdajs.com/docs/#pluck
https://ramdajs.com/docs/#sum

index.js
cart.js
import { add, pipe, pluck, sum } from 'ramda';
import cart from './cart';
const toUSD = (amount) => amount.toLocaleString('en-US', {
  style: 'currency',
  currency: 'USD',
});
const getTotalPrice = pipe(
  pluck('price'),
  sum,
  toUSD
);
const result = getTotalPrice(cart);
console.log({ result });

I personally liked this solution the most as it’s so concise and expressive. If you got this one then double-pat yourself on the back.