Counting the occurrences / frequency of array elements

You can use an object to hold the results:

const arr = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];
const counts = {};

for (const num of arr) {
  counts[num] = counts[num] ? counts[num] + 1 : 1;
}

console.log(counts);
console.log(counts[5], counts[2], counts[9], counts[4]);

So, now your counts object can tell you what the count is for a particular number:

console.log(counts[5]); // logs '3'

If you want to get an array of members, just use the keys() functions

keys(counts); // returns ["5", "2", "9", "4"]

One line ES6 solution. So many answers using object as a map but I can't see anyone using an actual Map

const map = arr.reduce((acc, e) => acc.set(e, (acc.get(e) || 0) + 1), new Map());

Use map.keys() to get unique elements

Use map.values() to get the occurrences

Use map.entries() to get the pairs [element, frequency]

var arr = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4]

const map = arr.reduce((acc, e) => acc.set(e, (acc.get(e) || 0) + 1), new Map());

console.info([...map.keys()])
console.info([...map.values()])
console.info([...map.entries()])

If using underscore or lodash, this is the simplest thing to do:

_.countBy(array);

Such that:

_.countBy([5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4])
=> Object {2: 5, 4: 1, 5: 3, 9: 1}

As pointed out by others, you can then execute the _.keys() and _.values() functions on the result to get just the unique numbers, and their occurrences, respectively. But in my experience, the original object is much easier to deal with.

Don't use two arrays for the result, use an object:

a      = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];
result = { };
for(var i = 0; i < a.length; ++i) {
    if(!result[a[i]])
        result[a[i]] = 0;
    ++result[a[i]];
}

Then result will look like:

{
    2: 5,
    4: 1,
    5: 3,
    9: 1
}

How about an ECMAScript2015 option.

const a = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];

const aCount = new Map([...new Set(a)].map(
    x => [x, a.filter(y => y === x).length]
));

aCount.get(5)  // 3
aCount.get(2)  // 5
aCount.get(9)  // 1
aCount.get(4)  // 1

This example passes the input array to the Set constructor creating a collection of unique values. The spread syntax then expands these values into a new array so we can call map and translate this into a two-dimensional array of [value, count] pairs - i.e. the following structure:

Array [
   [5, 3],
   [2, 5],
   [9, 1],
   [4, 1]
]

The new array is then passed to the Map constructor resulting in an iterable object:

Map {
    5 => 3,
    2 => 5,
    9 => 1,
    4 => 1
}

The great thing about a Map object is that it preserves data-types - that is to say aCount.get(5) will return 3 but aCount.get("5") will return undefined. It also allows for any value / type to act as a key meaning this solution will also work with an array of objects.

function frequencies(/* {Array} */ a){
    return new Map([...new Set(a)].map(
        x => [x, a.filter(y => y === x).length]
    ));
}

let foo = { value: 'foo' },
    bar = { value: 'bar' },
    baz = { value: 'baz' };

let aNumbers = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4],
    aObjects = [foo, bar, foo, foo, baz, bar];

frequencies(aNumbers).forEach((val, key) => console.log(key + ': ' + val));
frequencies(aObjects).forEach((val, key) => console.log(key.value + ': ' + val));

I think this is the simplest way how to count occurrences with same value in array.

var a = [true, false, false, false];
a.filter(function(value){
    return value === false;
}).length

2021's version

The more elegant way is using Logical nullish assignment (x ??= y) combined with Array#reduce() with O(n) time complexity.

The main idea is still using Array#reduce() to aggregate with output as object to get the highest performance (both time and space complexity) in terms of searching & construct bunches of intermediate arrays like other answers.

const arr = [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 9];
const result = arr.reduce((acc, curr) => {
  acc[curr] ??= {[curr]: 0};
  acc[curr][curr]++;
  
  return acc;
}, {});

console.log(Object.values(result));

Clean & Refactor code

Using Comma operator (,) syntax.

The comma operator (,) evaluates each of its operands (from left to right) and returns the value of the last operand.

const arr = [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 9];
const result = arr.reduce((acc, curr) => (acc[curr] = (acc[curr] || 0) + 1, acc), {});
console.log(result);

Output

{
  "2": 5,
  "4": 1,
  "5": 3,
  "9": 1
}

If you favour a single liner.

arr.reduce(function(countMap, word) {countMap[word] = ++countMap[word] || 1;return countMap}, {});

Edit (6/12/2015): The Explanation from the inside out. countMap is a map that maps a word with its frequency, which we can see the anonymous function. What reduce does is apply the function with arguments as all the array elements and countMap being passed as the return value of the last function call. The last parameter ({}) is the default value of countMap for the first function call.

ES6 version should be much simplifier (another one line solution)

let arr = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];
let acc = arr.reduce((acc, val) => acc.set(val, 1 + (acc.get(val) || 0)), new Map());

console.log(acc);
// output: Map { 5 => 3, 2 => 5, 9 => 1, 4 => 1 }

A Map instead of plain Object helping us to distinguish different type of elements, or else all counting are base on strings

Edit 2020: this is a pretty old answer (nine years). Extending the native prototype will always generate discussion. Although I think the programmer is free to choose her own programming style, here's a (more modern) approach to the problem without extending Array.prototype:

{
  // create array with some pseudo random values (1 - 5)
  const arr = Array.from({length: 100})
    .map( () => Math.floor(1 + Math.random() * 5) );
  // frequencies using a reducer
  const arrFrequencies = arr.reduce((acc, value) => 
      ({ ...acc, [value]: acc[value] + 1 || 1}), {} )
  console.log(arrFrequencies);    
  console.log(`Value 4 occurs ${arrFrequencies[4]} times in arrFrequencies`);

  // bonus: restore Array from frequencies
  const arrRestored = Object.entries(arrFrequencies)
    .reduce( (acc, [key, value]) => acc.concat(Array(value).fill(+key)), [] );
  console.log(arrRestored.join());  
}

.as-console-wrapper { top: 0; max-height: 100% !important; }

The old (2011) answer: you could extend Array.prototype, like this:

{
  Array.prototype.frequencies = function() {
    var l = this.length,
      result = {
        all: []
      };
    while (l--) {
      result[this[l]] = result[this[l]] ? ++result[this[l]] : 1;
    }
    // all pairs (label, frequencies) to an array of arrays(2)
    for (var l in result) {
      if (result.hasOwnProperty(l) && l !== 'all') {
        result.all.push([l, result[l]]);
      }
    }
    return result;
  };

  var freqs = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4].frequencies();
  console.log(`freqs[2]: ${freqs[2]}`); //=> 5
  
  // or
  var freqs = '1,1,2,one,one,2,2,22,three,four,five,three,three,five'
    .split(',')
    .frequencies();
    
  console.log(`freqs.three: ${freqs.three}`); //=> 3
  
// Alternatively you can utilize Array.map:

    Array.prototype.frequencies = function() {
      var freqs = {
        sum: 0
      };
      this.map(function(a) {
        if (!(a in this)) {
          this[a] = 1;
        } else {
          this[a] += 1;
        }
        this.sum += 1;
        return a;
      }, freqs);
      return freqs;
    }
}

.as-console-wrapper { top: 0; max-height: 100% !important; }

A shorter version using reduce and tilde (~) operator.

const data = [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 9];

function freq(nums) {
  return nums.reduce((acc, curr) => {
    acc[curr] = -~acc[curr];
    return acc;
  }, {});
}

console.log(freq(data));

Based on answer of @adamse and @pmandell (which I upvote), in ES6 you can do it in one line:

• 2017 edit: I use || to reduce code size and make it more readable.

var a=[7,1,7,2,2,7,3,3,3,7,,7,7,7];
alert(JSON.stringify(

a.reduce((r,k)=>{r[k]=1+r[k]||1;return r},{})

));

It can be used to count characters:

var s="ABRACADABRA";
alert(JSON.stringify(

s.split('').reduce((a, c)=>{a[c]++?0:a[c]=1;return a},{})

));

If you are using underscore you can go the functional route

a = ['foo', 'foo', 'bar'];

var results = _.reduce(a,function(counts,key){ counts[key]++; return counts },
                  _.object( _.map( _.uniq(a), function(key) { return [key, 0] })))

so your first array is

_.keys(results)

and the second array is

_.values(results)

most of this will default to native javascript functions if they are available

demo : http://jsfiddle.net/dAaUU/

var array = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];

function countDuplicates(obj, num){
  obj[num] = (++obj[num] || 1);
  return obj;
}

var answer = array.reduce(countDuplicates, {});
// answer => {2:5, 4:1, 5:3, 9:1};

If you still want two arrays, then you could use answer like this...

var uniqueNums = Object.keys(answer);
// uniqueNums => ["2", "4", "5", "9"];

var countOfNums = Object.keys(answer).map(key => answer[key]);
// countOfNums => [5, 1, 3, 1];

Or if you want uniqueNums to be numbers

var uniqueNums = Object.keys(answer).map(key => +key);
// uniqueNums => [2, 4, 5, 9];

So here's how I'd do it with some of the newest javascript features:

First, reduce the array to a Map of the counts:

let countMap = array.reduce(
  (map, value) => {map.set(value, (map.get(value) || 0) + 1); return map}, 
  new Map()
)

By using a Map, your starting array can contain any type of object, and the counts will be correct. Without a Map, some types of objects will give you strange counts. See the Map docs for more info on the differences.

This could also be done with an object if all your values are symbols, numbers, or strings:

let countObject = array.reduce(
  (map, value) => { map[value] = (map[value] || 0) + 1; return map },
  {}
)

Or slightly fancier in a functional way without mutation, using destructuring and object spread syntax:

let countObject = array.reduce(
  (value, {[value]: count = 0, ...rest}) => ({ [value]: count + 1, ...rest }),
  {}
)

At this point, you can use the Map or object for your counts (and the map is directly iterable, unlike an object), or convert it to two arrays.

For the Map:

countMap.forEach((count, value) => console.log(`value: ${value}, count: ${count}`)

let values = countMap.keys()
let counts = countMap.values()

Or for the object:

Object
  .entries(countObject) // convert to array of [key, valueAtKey] pairs
  .forEach(([value, count]) => console.log(`value: ${value}, count: ${count}`)

let values = Object.keys(countObject)
let counts = Object.values(countObject)

Solution using a map with O(n) time complexity.

var arr = [2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 4, 5, 5, 5, 9];

const countOccurrences = (arr) => {
    const map = {};
    for ( var i = 0; i < arr.length; i++ ) {
        map[arr[i]] = ~~map[arr[i]] + 1;
    }
    return map;
}

Demo: http://jsfiddle.net/simevidas/bnACW/

Here's just something light and easy for the eyes...

function count(a,i){
 var result = 0;
 for(var o in a)
  if(a[o] == i)
   result++;
 return result;
}

Edit: And since you want all the occurences...

function count(a){
 var result = {};
 for(var i in a){
  if(result[a[i]] == undefined) result[a[i]] = 0;
  result[a[i]]++;
 }
 return result;
}

I know this question is old but I realized there are too few solutions where you get the count array as asked with a minimal code so here is mine

// The initial array we want to count occurences
var initial = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];  

// The count array asked for
var count = Array.from(new Set(initial)).map(val => initial.filter(v => v === val).length);  

// Outputs [ 3, 5, 1, 1 ]

Beside you can get the set from that initial array with

var set = Array.from(new Set(initial));  

//set = [5, 2, 9, 4]  

To return an array which is then sortable:

let array = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4]
let reducedArray = array.reduce( (acc, curr, _, arr) => {
    if (acc.length == 0) acc.push({item: curr, count: 1})
    else if (acc.findIndex(f => f.item === curr ) === -1) acc.push({item: curr, count: 1})
    else ++acc[acc.findIndex(f => f.item === curr)].count
    return acc
}, []);

console.log(reducedArray.sort((a,b) => b.count - a.count ))

/*
  Output:
  [
    {
      "item": 2,
      "count": 5
    },
    {
      "item": 5,
      "count": 3
    },
    {
      "item": 9,
      "count": 1
    },
    {
      "item": 4,
      "count": 1
    }
  ]

*/

There is a much better and easy way that we can do this using ramda.js. Code sample here

const ary = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4]; R.countBy(r=> r)(ary) countBy documentation is at documentation

Using MAP you can have 2 arrays in the output: One containing the occurrences & the other one is containing the number of occurrences.

const dataset = [2,2,4,2,6,4,7,8,5,6,7,10,10,10,15];
let values = [];
let keys = [];

var mapWithOccurences = dataset.reduce((a,c) => {
  if(a.has(c)) a.set(c,a.get(c)+1);
  else a.set(c,1);
  return a;
}, new Map())
.forEach((value, key, map) => {
  keys.push(key);
  values.push(value);
});


console.log(keys)
console.log(values)

This question is more than 8 years old and many, many answers do not really take ES6 and its numerous advantages into account.

Perhaps is even more important to think about the consequences of our code for garbage collection/memory management whenever we create additional arrays, make double or triple copies of arrays or even convert arrays into objects. These are trivial observations for small applications but if scale is a long term objective then think about these, thoroughly.

If you just need a "counter" for specific data types and the starting point is an array (I assume you want therefore an ordered list and take advantage of the many properties and methods arrays offer), you can just simply iterate through array1 and populate array2 with the values and number of occurrences for these values found in array1.

As simple as that.

Example of simple class SimpleCounter (ES6) for Object Oriented Programming and Object Oriented Design

class SimpleCounter { 

    constructor(rawList){ // input array type
        this.rawList = rawList;
        this.finalList = [];
    }

    mapValues(){ // returns a new array

        this.rawList.forEach(value => {
            this.finalList[value] ? this.finalList[value]++ : this.finalList[value] = 1;
        });

        this.rawList = null; // remove array1 for garbage collection

        return this.finalList;

    }

}

module.exports = SimpleCounter;

Using Lodash

const values = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];
const frequency = _.map(_.groupBy(values), val => ({ value: val[0], frequency: val.length }));
console.log(frequency);

<script src="https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/lodash.js/4.17.15/lodash.min.js"></script>

Given the array supplied below:

const array = [ 'a', 'b', 'b', 'c', 'c', 'c' ];

You can use this simple one-liner to generate a hash map which links a key to the number of times it appears in the array:

const hash = Object.fromEntries([ ...array.reduce((map, key) => map.set(key, (map.get(key) || 0) + 1), new Map()) ]);
// { a: 1, b: 2, c: 3 }

Expanded & Explained:

// first, we use reduce to generate a map with values and the amount of times they appear
const map = array.reduce((map, key) => map.set(key, (map.get(key) || 0) + 1), new Map())

// next, we spread this map into an array
const table = [ ...map ];

// finally, we use Object.fromEntries to generate an object based on this entry table
const result = Object.fromEntries(table);

credit to @corashina for the array.reduce code

Check out the code below.

<html>
<head>
<script>
// array with values
var ar = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4];

var Unique = []; // we'll store a list of unique values in here
var Counts = []; // we'll store the number of occurances in here

for(var i in ar)
{
    var Index = ar[i];
    Unique[Index] = ar[i];
    if(typeof(Counts[Index])=='undefined')  
        Counts[Index]=1;
    else
        Counts[Index]++;
}

// remove empty items
Unique = Unique.filter(function(){ return true});
Counts = Counts.filter(function(){ return true});

alert(ar.join(','));
alert(Unique.join(','));
alert(Counts.join(','));

var a=[];

for(var i=0; i<Unique.length; i++)
{
    a.push(Unique[i] + ':' + Counts[i] + 'x');
}
alert(a.join(', '));

</script>
</head>
<body>

</body>
</html>

function countOcurrences(arr){
    return arr.reduce((aggregator, value, index, array) => {
      if(!aggregator[value]){
        return aggregator = {...aggregator, [value]: 1};  
      }else{
        return aggregator = {...aggregator, [value]:++aggregator[value]};
      }
    }, {})
}

My solution with ramda:

const testArray = [5, 5, 5, 2, 2, 2, 2, 2, 9, 4]

const counfFrequency = R.compose(
  R.map(R.length),
  R.groupBy(R.identity),
)

counfFrequency(testArray)

Link to REPL.