svelte/site/content/tutorial/04-logic/05-keyed-each-blocks/text.md

title
Keyed each blocks

By default, when you modify the value of an each block, it will add and remove items at the end of the block, and update any values that have changed. That might not be what you want.

It's easier to show why than to explain. Click the 'Remove first thing' button a few times, and notice that it's removing <Thing> components from the end and updating the color for those that remain. Instead, we'd like to remove the first <Thing> component and leave the rest unaffected.

To do that, we specify a unique identifier for the each block:

{#each things as thing (thing.id)}
	<Thing current={thing.color}/>
{/each}

The (thing.id) tells Svelte how to figure out what changed.

You can use any object as the key, as Svelte uses a Map internally — in other words you could do (thing) instead of (thing.id). Using a string or number is generally safer, however, since it means identity persists without referential equality, for example when updating with fresh data from an API server.