@richlewis42/callable

Callable instances for JS, in under 10 lines of ES6!

Motivation

Anything class be a function in Python simply by implementing a __call__ method.

For example,

class ImaFunc(object):
  def __init__(self, a):
    super()
    self.a = a

  @property
  def b(self):
    return self.a + 10

  def __call__(self, c):
  return [self.a, self.b, c]

f = ImaFunc(10)
f(30)                  # [10, 20, 30]

This can be really useful: the callable method has access to the member attributes and properties, so we can change how the function behaves post instatiation:

f.a = 40
f(60)                  # [40, 50, 60]

Additionally, the instance works with the class hierarchy nicely:

isinstance(f, ImaFunc) # True
isinstance(f, object)  # True
callable(f)            # True

However, in JavaScript, this is not so straightforward... until now!!

Install

For node:

npm install @richlewis/callable

For the browser, you can include a script tag to pull the library from unpkg:

<script
  type="text/javascript"
  src="https://unpkg.com/@richlewis/callable"
></script>

Usage

Inherit from the default export of this library, Callable:

class ImaFunc extends Callable {
  constructor(a) {
    super()
    this.a = a
  }

  get b() {
    return this.a + 10
  }

  __call__(c) {
    return [this.a, this.b, c]
  }
}

const f = new ImaFunc(10)
f(30) // [10, 20, 30]

f instanceof ImaFunc // true
f instanceof Callable // true
f instanceof Object // true
f instanceof Function // true

Now you can do some func-y tricks:

class SubFunc extends ImaFunc {
  constructor(a, d) {
    super(a)
    this.d = d
  }

  get e() {
    return this.d + 10
  }

  __call__(c, f) {
    return [...super.__call__(c), this.d, this.e, f]
  }
}

new SubFunc(10, 40)(30, 60) // [10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60]

How does it work?

Callable hijacks the constructor, returning a function that executes the __call__ function bound to itself. This function gets the prototype and member properties from the this object, and thus the inheritance chain is repaired!

Prior Art

Other libraries that present similar functionality:

• callable-instance
• callable-object
• callable-class
• putil-callable

License

MIT @ Rich Lewis