api-factory

Caution - work in progress - at this stage this doc is more draft/outline than anything

Why?

It's a simple way to build APIs that enables a lot of cool things to be done with little effort, like:

Put a feature list here, including but not limited to:

• Plugins
• Optional validation (faster without it, safer with - skip validation on data known to be good for big efficiency gains)
• Build subsets and supersets of your API (minimal tree, jquery++ level of tree)
• Easy decorators:
  • logging
  • validation
  • save and replay action lists
  • undo/redo stack
• Create adapters and bridges to interop with other data structures/libraries
• Memoizing
• Object pooling to reduce GC
• Dependency injection

Code style focus is on paring js down to its most powerful features and keeping things very simple - eliminate weird this behaviour, rely on functional concepts, simple objects (preferably JSON-serializable), object composition instead of inheritance etc. - but still be able to build complex things out of simple parts. Class-free OO. Started with Crockford's JS Good Parts but also see his talks on the better parts, rationale behind ES6 and etc; Crockford, Eric Elliot, Mattias Petter Johansson et al

How?

Things to consider for doc:

• Using functional composition to create object oriented APIs over a state.
• Functional and object oriented synthesis - but not class based
• Favouring composition over inheritance - GoF
• Avoiding weird classes/prototypes, this etc - fragile
• Basis is composing functions and objects, two aspects of js that are great
• Plugins are just closures
• Modular, resuable
• Inversion of control / dependency injection
• Controlling mutation / access to state - create a small surface area for mutation
• Optional validation
• Override/wrapper/decorator plugins
• Adapters, bridges etc.
• Action pattern, undo/redo stack etc
• Hide state from consumers
• Why core/api/privates/statics
• Decoupling/separation of concerns etc.
• Getting state from an api instance, getting an api instance from state - getApi/getState
• Caching/memoizing map etc. - === comparison and etc
• State key
• Creating state
• Plugin order / capturing previous functions / overriding and calling previous etc
• onCreate - observing creation of api instances
• isState
• Object pooling?
• Examples: tree, grid

Code style

Never use (unless interop with 3rd party or optimizing hot code):

• coercive equals a == b
• falsiness const i = 1; if( i ){ /* ... */ }
• null
• this
• prototype
• class
• etc

Api - a factory for creating instances

Call ApiFactory with your plugins, get back an factory for your specific API type that takes arguments that define the underlying state and get back an API instance

eg:

const ApiFactory = require( '@mojule/api-factory' )
const plugins = require( './path/to/your/plugins' )

// create a Point factory by passing ApiFactory plugins for managing point state
const Point = ApiFactory( plugins )

// create Point API instances
const p1 = Point( 3, 4 )
const p2 = Point( 4, 5 )
// call a plugin
const p3 = p1.add( p2 )

api - an instance

An instance of your API - all your public plugins operating over your state

plugins

Plugins can be of four types, static, core, api, private:

static plugins

Particularly useful for functions that create new instances, eg a function that takes a serialized JSON version of the state and returns a new api instance

A static plugin closure looks like:

({ statics, Api }) => {
  statics.deserialize = jsonObj => { /*...*/ }
}

core api

Things that are core to generating APIs, not specific to your API use case or the type of state you're working with - if a function would be useful regardless of the resultant API or underlying state, it belongs in core

Kinda like private statics if you're used to class oriented programming

A plugin closure looks like:

({ core, Api }) => {
  // attach your core plugins
  core.someCoreFunction = ( ...args ) => { //... }
}

default core plugins used by API factory:

Usually you would override some or all of these for your use case

({ core }) => {
  core.createState = ( ...args ) => args[ 0 ]
  core.getStateKey = state => state
  core.isState = state => true
  core.onCreate = api => {}
}

private api

Plugins that can be called internally but aren't exposed to the end consumer of the API

({ privates, state, core, statics, Api }) => {
  privates.someFn = ( ...args ) => { /*...*/ }
}

There are no default plugins, as they are dependant on the type of state etc

public api

The plugins that end up being exposed to the end consumer of your API code

({ api, state, core, privates, statics, Api }) => {
  api.someFn = ( ...args ) => { /*...*/ }
}

redux-like pattern

You can use api factory in a redux like style:

const { is } = require( '@mojule/is' )

const isTodo = target =>
  is.object( target ) && is.string( target.text ) &&
  is.boolean( target.completed )

const isTodoList = target =>
  is.array( target ) && target.every( isTodo )

const isTodoState = target =>
  is.object( target ) && isTodoList( target.todos ) &&
  is.string( target.visibilityFilter )

const visibilityFilter = ( state = 'SHOW_ALL', action = {} ) => {
  if( action.type === 'visibility' )
    return action.filter

  return state
}

const todos = ( state = [], action = {} ) => {
  if( action.type === 'add' )
    return state.concat([{ text: action.text, completed: false }])

  if( action.type === 'toggle' )
    return state.map( ( todo, index ) =>
      action.index === index ?
        { text: todo.text, completed: !todo.completed } : todo
    )

  return state
}

const todoApp = ( state = {}, action = {} ) => ({
  todos: todos( state.todos, action ),
  visibilityFilter: visibilityFilter( state.visibilityFilter, action )
})

const corePlugins =
  ({ core }) => {
    core.createState = ( ...args ) => {
      if( isTodoState( args[ 0 ] ) )
        return args[ 0 ]

      return {
        todos: args.map( text => ({
          text, completed: false
        })),
        visibilityFilter: 'SHOW_ALL'
      }
    }

    core.isState = isTodoState
  }

const privatePlugins =
  ({ privates, state, Api }) => {
    privates.createAction = ( type, argsMapper ) =>
      ( ...args ) => Api(
        todoApp(
          state,
          Object.assign(
            { type },
            argsMapper( ...args )
          )
        )
      )
  }

const publicPlugins =
  ({ api, state, privates }) => {
    const { createAction } = privates

    api.add = createAction( 'add', text => ({ text }) )
    api.toggle = createAction( 'toggle', index => ({ index }) )
    api.visibility = createAction( 'visibility', filter => ({ filter }) )

    api.log = () => {
      let todos = state.todos

      if( state.visibilityFilter === 'SHOW_COMPLETED' ){
        console.log( 'Completed tasks' )
        todos = todos.filter( t => t.completed )
      } else if( state.visibilityFilter === 'SHOW_UNCOMPLETED' ){
        console.log( 'Incomplete tasks' )
        todos = todos.filter( t => !t.completed )
      } else {
        console.log( 'All tasks' )
      }
      console.log( '---' )

      todos.forEach( t =>
        console.log( t.text, t.completed ? '(completed)' : '(incomplete)' )
      )
      console.log()
    }
  }

const Todos = ApiFactory({
  core: corePlugins,
  privates: privatePlugins,
  api: publicPlugins
})

const initial = Todos( 'Eat food', 'Exercise' )

initial.log()

const added = initial.add( 'Foo the bar' )

added.log()

const toggled = added.toggle( 0 )

toggled.log()

const completed = toggled.visibility( 'SHOW_COMPLETED' )

completed.log()

const uncompleted = completed.visibility( 'SHOW_UNCOMPLETED' )

uncompleted.log()

License

MIT