How to Return Multiple Values from a Function in JavaScript

In JavaScript, you can only return one value from a function.

This is usually fine in most cases, but in other cases, you might need to return multiple things, like for example a success boolean and a status message.

In this post, we'll learn how to return multiple values from a function in JavaScript.

Returning Multiple Values from a Function

Let's say you're writing an API and you want to return a success boolean indicating if the request was successful or not, and a status message.

Usually, you'd have to do something like this:

JAVASCRIPT
const getSuccess = () => {
    return true;
}

const getMessage = () => {
    return "Success!";
}

const success = getSuccess();
const message = getMessage();

// do something with success and message

However, the problem with this is that the operation might need to be performed multiple times as the message might rely on the success boolean.

Instead, we can try returning an array:

JAVASCRIPT
const getSuccess = () => {
    // perform operation here
    return [true, "Success!"];
}

const [success, message] = getSuccess();

// do something with success and message

By taking advantage of array destructuring, we can set the values of both the success boolean and the message in one line, thereby simulating a function that returns multiple values.

This also works when using an object:

JAVASCRIPT
const getSuccess = () => {
    // perform operation here
    return {
        success: true,
        message: "Success!"
    };
}

const { success, message } = getSuccess();

// do something with success and message

Instead of array destructuring, we're using object destructuring, and it accomplishes the same task as before.

Conclusion

In this post, we looked at how to simulate returning multiple values from a single function.

Simply take advantage of either array destructuring or object destructuring to set multiple variables from a single return.

Thanks for reading and happy coding!

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