@unruly-software/result

Getting started

Installation

yarn add @unruly-software/result

pnpm i @unruly-software/result

npm i @unruly-software/result

Usage

Until full documentation is written most methods have hoverable documentation written in JSDoc comments.

import { Result } from '@unruly-software/result'

Result.invokeAsync(getUser, userId) // AsyncResult<User, Error>
Result.wrapAsync(getUser) // (string) => AsyncResult<User, Error>

Why?

Result is an elegant sync/async error wrapper similar to the Either Monad but intended for practical use in most Typescript codebases.

Encode error types for methods

Errors can be explicitly typed allowing consumers of your module to know exactly what can go wrong when they use your code.

In the following example it's clear that we may want to explicitly handle the NotFound error thrown by find and if we hit a rate limit we may want to retry after some amount of time has passed.

interface UserRepo {
    all(): AsyncResult<User[], RateLimitError>
    find(userId: string): AsyncResult<User, NotFound | RateLimitError>
}

Simplify error handling

Error handling can quickly become complex when writing to interfaces such as the classic Express request/response handler.

Here is a slightly complex handler:

const getUserPosts = async (req, res) => {
    let user: User
    try {
        user = await authorize(req)
    } catch(e) {
        console.error(e)
        res.status(500).send('Something went wrong')
        return;
    }

    let posts: Post[]
    try {
        posts = await getPostsForUser(user)
    } catch(e) {
        console.error(e)
        res.status(500).send('Something went wrong')
        return;
    }

    res.send(200).json({ posts })
}

We can use the Result.invokeAsync method to wrap errors as part of our normal flow instead.

const getUserPosts = async (req, res) => {
  await Result.invokeAsync(authorize, req)
    .mapAsync(getPostsForUser)
    .tap(
        (posts) => res.send(200).json({ posts }),
        (error) => {
            console.error(error)
            res.send(500).send('Something went wrong') 
        }
    )
}

Map between async and sync code seamlessly

The most unique aspect of this library is its first class treatment of async errors. The types Result<T, E> and AsyncResult<T, E> can be converted to on the fly using helper methods.

Since AsyncResult is a Thenable it works anywhere promises do and we can simply await the result for it to run to completion.

const getUserAsync = Result.wrapAsync(getUser)

getUser(userId) // AsyncResult<User>

// Awaiting the result converts it to normal result
const userResult = await getUser(userId) // Result<User>


const posts = userResult.mapAsync(loadPostsForUser) // AsyncResult<Post[]>

// We can explicitly unwrap the result causing it to throw
await posts.get() // Post[]

// We could also safely return an error or the value
await posts.getEither() // Post[] | Error

// We can call .map() to synchronously transform the value
await posts.map(post => p.name) // AsyncResult<string>

const awaited = await posts // Result<Post[]>

// Calling .mapAsync() turns the result back into an AsyncResult allowing
further chaining.
awaited.mapAsync(getAuthorForPosts) // AsyncResult<Author[]>