alexlaforge/clarifyjs

Create and Execute Chained Javascript Methods In Any Order You want

clarifyJs

ClarifyJs allows you to easily create chained methods that can be executed in any order you want.

This feature is particularly useful when you want to make your code more friendly and declarative, For Example we have these chained methods for sending a message to a specific group of users:

send('hello everyone!').to('friends');

This works fine with normal method chaining but what about when we want to create more complex chained methods? For example we want to filter some of our friends out:

send('hello everyone!').to('friends').except('john');

Normal javascript methods are executed from left-to-right, So when we reach "except" filter the message has already been sent to all friends. However ClarifyJs allows to overcome this limitation by allowing to priorities methods to allow execution in any order.

ClarifyJs also allows controlling async methods. Suppose we want to log a message to console when the message has been sent:

send('hello everyone!').to('friends').then.log('message has been sent.');

The problem is that if "send" method is a async method then the log message will be printed before the message is actually sent. ClarifyJs allows to decide whether the process should wait for a specific async method to complete before moving on or just execute and pass by it.

These features come in price of making the whole process async.

Note That ClarifyJs is not intended to wrap your whole code but just endpoints that you want to be called more fluently or want to put a layer of abstract over calling functions and passing arguments.

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Installation

In a browser:

<script src="clarify.js"></script>

Using npm:

$ npm i --save clarifyjs

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Usage

First the methods routes must be defined.

Syntax:

// Array of routes objects
const routesData = [ ...];
const root = clarify({ routes: routesData });

Routes

Routes are objects that have at least the two property handler and path.

Property	Type	Default Value	Description
path	String	None	The address of the method, Root address is empty string. Wildcard can be used.
handler	Function	None	The method function.
storeResultAs	String	Empty String	Store method's result with this name.
inject	String/Array	Empty Array	Name of the stored results to pass to the method handler
controller	String	()	"()" if the method should be called with paranthesis otherwise "[]"
awaitForHandler	Boolean	False	Whether the process should wait for the method handler to complete or not.
Priority	Number	-Infinity	Priority of the method execution, Higher priority methods will be executed before others.

Example

Demonstration of the example explained above:

const routesData = [
	{
		path: '',
		handler: sendMessageFunc,
		inject: ['contacts'],
  		awaitForHandler: true,
		priority: 0
	},
	{
		path: 'to',
		handler: contactSelectorFunc,
		storeResultAs: 'contacts',
		priority: 2
	},
        {
		path: 'to.except',
		handler: contactFilterFunc,
		inject: ['contacts'],
		storeResultAs: 'contacts',
		priority: 1
	},
	{
		path: 'to.except.then.log',
		handler: logFunc,
		priority: -Infinity
	}
];

const send = clarify({ routes: routesData });
send('hello everyone!').to('friends').except('john').then.log('message has been sent!');

Storage

ClarifyJs has an integrated storage system that can store and pass objects to methods. These objects may also have default values:

const storage = {
	contacts: 'friends'
};

const send = clarify({ routes, storage });