How to conditionally push an item in an observable array?

An observableArray exposes an indexOf function (wrapper to ko.utils.arrayIndexOf). This allows you to do:

if (myObservableArray.indexOf(itemToAdd) < 0) {
  myObservableArray.push(itemToAdd);
}

If the two are not actually a reference to the same object and you want to run custom comparison logic, then you can use ko.utils.arrayFirst like:

var match = ko.utils.arrayFirst(myObservableArray(), function(item) {
    return itemToAdd.id === item.id;
});

if (!match) {
  myObservableArray.push(itemToAdd);
}