Question

I am trying to learn more about JavaScript recursive function, but I couldn’t find examples of using it for front-end web development. (I only find factorial example, which is not very useful for me).

What are the common cases I should use recursive function for front-end web development?

Answer 1

The #1 use-case of recursion in client-side javascript is tree traversing. Since both DOM and JSON are tree structures, most of the time you use recursion to traverse them, following the “do something with a node and repeat the same with its descendant nodes” pattern, like for example:

 uppercase_text_nodes(node):  // pseudocode
       if node.type == TEXT
           node.value = node.text.toUpperCase
       else for each child in node.children
           uppercase_text_nodes(child)