If you've ever wrestled with loops or Lambda functions just to transform an array in Xano, you're going to love what's been added to the platform. Six new array manipulation functions — Map, Partition, Group By, Difference, Intersection, and Union — are now available in the Function Stack, and they make data transformation dramatically faster and cleaner.
Map: Transform Every Element in an Array
The Map function lets you transform each element in an array without building a separate loop in your function stack. When you add it under Data Manipulation > Arrays, you'll pass in your array and choose an output type — either an array of values or an array of objects. You get access to two helpful keywords: this, which represents the current item, and index, which represents its position. For example, you can use a concat filter to combine this and index with a dash separator, turning [1, 2, 3] into [1-0, 2-1, 3-2]. It's a simple demo, but the possibilities for reshaping your data are significant.
Partition: Split an Array into True and False Buckets
Partition is one of the most immediately useful additions. It evaluates an expression for each element and sorts items into a true bucket or a false bucket based on the result. For instance, passing in [1, 2, 3] with the condition this < 3 will place 1 and 2 in the true bucket and 3 in the false bucket. You can then use each bucket independently in the rest of your workflow.
Group By: Organize Array Items Around a Key or Expression
Group By lets you reorganize an array of objects by grouping them around a shared value. Using a products array, you can group items by stock_quantity, and each unique quantity value becomes a key containing all matching products. You can also pass in an expression — like this < 50 — to group items into two buckets: those that meet the condition and those that don't. It's a flexible tool for segmenting your data in meaningful ways.
Difference, Intersection, and Union: Compare Two Arrays at Once
These three functions let you work across two arrays without writing any custom filter logic.
- Difference returns values found in the first array but not the second. If your first array is
[1, 2, 4]and the second is[1, 2, 3], you get back[4]. - Intersection returns only the values shared by both arrays. Using the same example, you'd get
[1, 2]. - Union combines both arrays and keeps only unique values, so
[1, 2, 4]and[1, 2, 3]produce[1, 2, 4, 3]. You can even chain a sort filter on the output to return values in ascending order.
Together, these six functions give you a clean, efficient toolkit for handling nearly any array transformation your workflows require — no extra loops needed.
