overview

aonyx is in beta state. There are still more features I wish to add and some refactoring that needs to be done.

aonyx is a very simple, very small dependency manager/injector for node. It does NOT provide require-like functionality, instead it is designed to give developers a means of injecting "services" into functions based on their parameter names. This is not unlike what AngularJS provides.

using aonyx

Using aonyx is simple. You just need to follow a couple easy steps.

First, you need to register your service with aonyx. This is accomplished like so...

aonyx = require 'aonyx'

class MyService
    myMethod: (something) ->
        return something

aonyx.register 'MyService', MyService

Great! Now we have a service registered with the name "myService" (note that aonyx uses camelCase and will transform UpperCamel into lowerCamel). This service simple, just a class with a single method, but it serves our purpose.

Next, we have to have a function that's going to need that service. Once we have that, we need to tell aonyx to do its injection magic. Lukcily this is easier than it sounds...

aonyx = require 'aonyx'

myFunction = (myService) ->
    service = new myService()
    console.log service.myMethod('Hey There')

# This creates a new injector and then immediately calls it
aonyx.inject(myFunction)()

Simple, right? There's more you can do with aonyx, though! For instance, aonyx will merge service resolutions with regular arguments. Take this example...

myFunction = (myService, someParam) ->
    service = new myService()
    console.log service.myMethod(someParam) # Will log "Yolo!"

aonyx.inject(myFunction)('Yolo!')

It doesn't even matter what order your parameters are in, aonyx will just put them all together for you correctly... well, kind of :) There is more information about how aonyx merges service injections and argument lists.

Now, what happens if you want to be able to resolve a service at resolution time? When might this be handy? Let's say you want to be able to inject the current http response object into a method. You can't just register a service that returns the response object as the response is different for each request. Ideally you'd be able to resolve a request for service at the time it's requested, right when you have the response object handy. Luckily for us, aonyx provides a way to do this. Take the following example...

# In some file, somewhere...
module.exports =
    myRouteHandler: ($response) ->
        $response.send 'Hello there!'

# In our server.coffee file...
aonyx = require 'aonyx'
routeHandler = require 'some/file/somewhere'

app.get '/my/route', (request, response, next) ->
    injector = aonyx.inject(routeHandler.myRouteHandler)
    injector.resolver (service) ->
        # NOTE: In order for service and argument merging to work, you must return
        # null from your resolver if you can't resolve the requested service.
        return null if service isnt '$response'
        return response
    injector()

What's happening here is we are first creating our injector for our route handler method. We are then defining a resolver method which will be called when aonyx finds a parameter for which it can't resolve. In our resolver method we're saying "If you're asking for a $response service, take this response object.. if not, return null". You need to always return null from your resolver if you can't resolve the requested service. This makes it so aonyx can continue to properly merge our service resolutions with our arguments.

Simple, yeah?

A note about merging service injections and arguments

When aonyx builds the service list that will be injected into a function, it will put null in place for services that are not found. These nulls will be replaced with values from our passed in arguments. In a hypothetical situation, aonyx may return the following service-injected array, where the second and fourth parameters couldn't be matched with a registered service...

[ { foo: 'bar' }, null, function() { ... }, null ]

And the arguments passed to our inject method look something like this

[ true, { some: 'other object' } ]

The final array, which will be passed to our "injectee", would look something like this...

# Notice the nulls were replaced by the values of the arguments supplied to aonyx.
[ { foo: 'bar' }, true, function() { ... }, { some: 'other object' } ]

installation

Because aonyx is still in the early alpha stages of development it has not yet been pushed to npm. this means that if you wish to use aonyx as it stands right now, you will need to download the source and install the module yourself. luckily, that's as easy as copying the aonyx folder into the node_modules folder of your project.