o({})

Atom

Atom is a simple and powerful OO application toolkit for Javascript.

The central design goal of Atom is to provide a declarative mechanism for defining classes, objects (instances of classes), and configurable command-line programs.

Atom supports both the classical and prototype patterns of implementing OO in a simple and unified manner. In addition, Atom is a Depedency Injection framework that allows for the creation of highly configurable re-usable software components and applications.

In particular, Atom provides mechanisms for:

• Defining objects and classes
• Defining re-usable software components and managing their lifecycle
• Defining top-level commandline interfaces with easy options parsing
• Managing application-level configuration
• Configuring and managing application logging

Installing Atom

Using npm

% cd <your-app>
% npm install atom

From git:

% git clone [email protected]:objectlabs/atom.git
% cd <your-app>
% npm install <path-to-atom>

To run unit tests

% node ./test/all.js

Using Atom

The core of Atom is comprised of two operators:

• The o operator makes objects
• The oo operator makes classes

The o operator

The o operator is used to make objects. The operator takes a single object datum argument and returns an object based on the supplied specification. The specification is an object that consists of:

• An optional _type field, whose value may be either a Function or (representing a class constructor) or another object.

• A series of name / value pairs specifying the properties of the object

Some examples

The empty object

var o = require('atom').o(module)

o({})

which is the same as

o({_type: Object})

which simply evaluates to {}.

Simple object

var o = require('atom').o(module)

o({a: 1,
   b: 2});

Specifying a class via a constructor Function (in the classical style)

var o = require('atom').o(module)

function Person() {
   this.name = "Some Person";
   this.email = null,
   this.age = 0;
}

o({_type: Person,
   name: "Jo Smith",
   email: "[email protected]",
   age: 35});

Specifying another object as a prototype

var o = require('atom').o(module)

var Person = o({
   name: "Some Person",
   email: null,
   age: 0
});

o({_type: Person,
   name: "Jo Smith",
   email: "[email protected]",
   age: 35});

Nested objects

var o = require('atom').o(module)

o({_type: Person,
   name: "Jo Smith",
   email: "[email protected]",
   age: 35,
   address = o({
      _type: Address
      street: "100 Foo St.",
      city: "San Francisco",
      state: "CA",
      zip: "93212"
   })
});

The oo operator

The oo operator is used to make classes. All oo expressions evaluate to a value that is a Function that can be used as a constructor. Like the o operator, the oo operator takes a single object argument. In this case the object specification is the specification for a class. The _type field can be used to specify superclass to extend and must be a Function value.

Defining contructors and superclasses

Classes defined with oo can optionally specify a constructor, which is a function to be used to initialize instance properties for objects of the defined class. Constructor functions are specified via the meta property _C.

Classes can define a superclass from which it extends via the _type meta property (the same way object specify which class they are an instance of when using the o operator).

If the class being defined has a superclass Atom will automatically chain constructors, calling the constructor of the superclass before calling the constructor of the class being defined.

Delegating to superclass methods

To delegate to a method defined in a superclass, use the following form:

<SuperClass>.prototype.<method>.call(this, <args>)

Example

var o = require('atom').o(module)
var oo = require('atom').oo(module)

var Animal = oo({
  _C: function() {
    this.name = "Some animal"
    this.age = 0
    this.weight = 0
  },
   
  say: function() {
    return this.name;
  }
})

var Dog = oo({
   _type: Animal,
   _C: function() {
    this.name = "Some Dog"
  },
  
  say: function() {
    return "woof: " + Animal.prototype.say.call(this)    // delegating to superclass
  }
})

var fido = o({
   _type: Dog,
   name: "Fido",
   age: 3,
   weight: 10
})

Defining properties

Properties can be defined as simple fieldname / value pairs

o({
  name: "John Smith"
})

or they can be defined dynamically with getters and setters as you would with Javascript's Object.defineProperty

o({
  now: {
    $property: {
      get: function() {
        return new Date()
      }
    }
  }
})

Object lifecycle and _init

Object creation via the o operator follows this sequence:

1. The _type field is evaluated. If it is a function it is then considered a constructor and a new instance of that Class is created. If it is an object that object is used as the new object's prototype. If no _type is supplied the default value of Object is used.
2. If the class defines a constructor (via _C) that constructor is called after calling the constructor of the class's _type (constructors defined by _C are automatically chained).
3. All field definitions in the object passed to the o operator are added to the newly created object
4. If the object has an _init method (either directly or via its class), it is called
5. The newly created object is returned

Example using _init:

o({
  port: 8080,
  app: null,
  db: null,
  _init: function() {
    this.app = express.createServer()
    this.app.listen(this.port)
  }
})

Creating command line programs with Atom

Atom allows for the easy creation of command line programs with built-in argument parsing. You can use the _main property to define a top-level entry point (or points) to your application.

Example:

var o = require('atom').o(module);
var _o = require('atom')._o(module);

module.exports = o({
  verbose: false,
  _app: null,
  
  cmdargs: { // supports nomnom definitions (see https://github.com/harthur/nomnom)
    port: {
      abbr: "p",
      help: "port server should listen on",
      required: false,
      default: 8080
    },
    verbose: {
      abbr: "v",
      help: "enable verbose logging",
      required: false,
      default: false,
      property: true // set this value as a field on this object when parsed as a cmdline option
    }
  }
  
  _main: function(options) {
    this.port = options.port
    this._app = express.createServer()
    this._app.listen(this.port)
  }
})

You can then call your program from the commandline like this:

% node <path-to-your-module> <options>

Example:

% node SimpleCmdlineApp -h
Usage: node SimpleCmdlineApp [options]

Options:
   -p, --port      port server should listen on [8080]
   -v, --verbose   enable verbose logging  [false]

Signal Handling

If you want to register any signal handlers, atom can do this for you. Simply add a property named signalHandlers to the object that defines which signals you want to catch and the handler that is responsible for handling these signals. signalHandlers should be an object where the keys are signal names (e.g. SIGINT) and the values are functions. If you want to use the same handler for multiple signals, separate the signal names in a key with whitespace (see the example).

Example:

var o = require('atom').o(module)

o.main({
  _type: Object,

  _C: function() {
    this.interval = null
  },

  signalHandlers: {
    'SIGUSR1 \t SIGUSR2    SIGINT': function() {
      console.log('bop')
    },
    'SIGHUP': function() {
      console.log('boop')
    },
    'SIGTERM': function() {
      console.log('disabling alarm')
      clearInterval(this.interval)
    }
  },

  _main: function() {
    this.interval = setInterval(function () {
      console.log('beep')
    }, 2000)
  }
})

Argument Parsing

The arg-parser used internally by Atom is nomnom (please see https://github.com/harthur/nomnom for a full list of options and features). Atom supports nomnom commands and options with a few extra configuration options noted below.

To specify your CLI interface, you should add a top-level property to your object named cmdargs. The object defined at cmdargs can contain both commands and options. Options specific to a command should be nested under the command using the cmdargs property. In addition to the cmdargs property, commands also support full, default, and property. full behaves the same for commands as it does for options, allowing you to alias your command with something CLI friendly (e.g. 'start-server' rather than 'startServer'). default allows you to specify a default command. In the event that a command is not specified, the options provided will be parsed in the context of that command. If property is specified, then the parsed command (along with any nested options) will be attached to the top level object as a property (overwriting any property that may have previously existed).

Options support the property property as well. Please note that if property is specified on an option nested within a command, that property will still be set on the top-level object.

Regardless of whether you specify property on any commands or options, the top-level object will contain a parsedCmdargs property whose value will contain the fully parsed command line. Note that this will also be passed to your _main method should you decide to define one.

Main

There are two ways to define your program's entry point. If you do not utilize commands, then the recommended method is simply to define _main to be a function that will take the parsed command line as an argument.

If commands are present, and it makes sense to have a separate handler associated with each command, you can instead define _main to be an object where the property names correspond to the command names defined in cmdargs. Atom will then jump to the appropriate handler based on the command specified. If no command is specified (and default was not specified on any command in cmdargs), Atom will jump to the function pointed to by the default property on _main.

Example:

var fs = require('fs')
var o = require('atom').o(module);
var _o = require('atom')._o(module);

module.exports = o({
  verbose: false,
  _app: null,
  
  cmdargs: { // supports nomnom definitions (see https://github.com/harthur/nomnom)
    startServer: {
      command: true,
      full: 'start-server',
      default: true,
      cmdargs: {
        port: {
          abbr: "p",
          help: "port server should listen on",
          required: false,
          default: 8080
      }
    },
    stopServer: {
      command: true,
      full: 'stop-server',
    }
    verbose: {
      abbr: "v",
      help: "enable verbose logging",
      required: false,
      default: false,
      property: true // set this value as a field on this object when parsed as a cmdline option
    }
  }
  
  _main: {
    startServer: function(options) {
      this.port = options.port
      this._app = express.createServer()
      this._app.listen(this.port)
      fs.writeFileSync('/tmp/server.pid', process.pid, {encoding: 'utf8'})
    },
    stopServer: function(options) {
      var pid = fs.readFileSync('/tmp/server.pid', {encoding: 'utf8'})
      process.kill(pid, 'SIGINT')
    }
  }
})