Why can we omit a return statement in this usage of the method map()

November 4, 2021

I am currently going over the WebRTC tutorial on their docs when I noticed that they use forEach after their usage of map(). In order to use forEach and expect a value instead of undefined array, map() would have needed to return an array, which I don’t see how it can, because it doesn’t return anything.

function updateCameraList(cameras) {
    const listElement = document.querySelector('select#availableCameras');
    listElement.innerHTML = '';
    cameras.map(camera => {
        const cameraOption = document.createElement('option');
        cameraOption.label = camera.label;
        cameraOption.value = camera.deviceId;
    }).forEach(cameraOption => listElement.add(cameraOption));
}

>Solution :

The code will not work since the map returns nothing.

options.label is not supported well by all browsers

Here is a better method

function updateCameraList(cameras) {
  document.getElementById('availableCameras').innerHTML = cameras
  .map(({label, deviceId}) => `<option value="${deviceId}">${label}</option>`)
  .join(""); 
}