caseof

Elm and Haskell-inspired case-of

A tiny package imitating a case-of expression from languages like Elm and Haskell.

• Getting Started
  • Installing
  • Usage
• Motivation
• Contribution
• Compatibility
• Changelog
• Versioning
• License
• Further reading

Getting started

Installing

Use the following command to add it to your project:

npm install --save caseof

Usage

otherwise :: a -⁠> Boolean

Simply a function that always returns true. Will always be considered a "match", and its handler will always be executed if it is encountered. It is mainly useful as a default case.

> otherwise ()
true

> otherwise ('foo')
true

> caseOf ((when) => {
.   when (x => x < 20) (x => x + 10)
.   when (otherwise) (() => 0)
. }) (23)
0

caseOfAll :: ((a -⁠> Boolean) -⁠> (a -⁠> b) -⁠> Undefined) -⁠> a -⁠> Array b

Returns the result of all matching cases' handlers. The order will be the same order as when was called.

> caseOf.all ((when) => {
.   when (x => typeof x === 'number') (x => x + 1)
.   when (x => typeof x === 'number') (x => x - 0)
. }) (1)
[2, 0]

> caseOf.all ((when) => {
.   when (x => x > 0) (x => x - 1)
.   when (x => x < 0) (x => x + 1)
. }) (-4)
[-3]

Like caseOf, this function throws if none of the cases match.

> caseOf.all ((when) => {
.  when (x => x > 3) (x => x)
. }) (0)
! Error None of the cases matches the value

caseOf :: ((a -⁠> Boolean) -⁠> (a -⁠> b) -⁠> Undefined) -⁠> a -⁠> b

Returns the result of the first matching case. This function is lazy, and only the first matching handler is run.

> caseOf ((when) => {
.   when (x => x === 'foo') (x => x + 'bar')
.   when (x => typeof x === 'string') (x => x.toUpperCase ())
. }) ('foo')
'foobar'

> let fn = caseOf ((when) => {
.   when (x => x % 15 === 0) (() => 'FizzBuzz')
.   when (x => x % 3 === 0) (() => 'Fizz')
.   when (x => x % 5 === 0) (() => 'Buzz')
.   when (() => true) (x => x) // these two
.   when (caseOf.otherwise) (x => x) // are equivalent
. })

> fn (1)
1

> fn (3)
'Fizz'

> fn (5)
'Buzz'

> fn (15)
'FizzBuzz'

This function throws an error if none of the cases match.

> caseOf ((when) => {
.   when (x => x === 'foo') (x => x + 'bar')
. }) ('quack')
! Error: None of the cases matches the value

Motivation

Having used sanctuary quite a lot, we found it annoying having to repeat this kind of pattern:

function whatFoo(x) {
	if (x === 3) {
		return "foo";
	}
	if (x > 3) {
		return "bar";
	}
	if (x < 3) {
		return "foobar";
	}
	return "quack";
}

Inevitably, even with monads encapsulating most of this kind of control flow for you, you might inevitably find yourself repeating this kind of "if-stacking" pattern.

To me, this is rather verbose and ugly, and there are a lot of things being repeated in terms of statements. Keep in mind though: there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with this kind of "if-stacking".

Because of this, and because we simply adore Elm and Haskell's case x of expressions (aka simply "Case expressions"), we saw it necessary to implement something along those lines in Javascript.

So, instead of the "ugly" if-stacking above, we can write

function whatFoo(x) {
	return caseOf((when) => {
		when((x) => x === 3)(() => "foo");
		when((x) => x > 3)(() => "bar");
		when((x) => x < 3)(() => "foobar");
		when(() => true)(() => "quack");
	})(x);
}

But, as you can see, caseOf (and caseOf.all) is a curried function, meaning is not a function that takes two arguments, like function fn(x, y). No no, it is a function that takes one argument, and then returns another function, which subsequently takes another argument:

function fn(x) {
  return function(y) {
    ...
  }
}

This allows us to just asign to whatFoo, instead of wrapping caseOf:

var whatFoo =
	caseOf((when) => {
		when((x) => x === 3)(() => "foo");
		when((x) => x > 3)(() => "bar");
		when((x) => x < 3)(() => "foobar");
		when(() => true)(() => "quack");
	}) > whatFoo(3);
("foo");

And the predicate functions can just be references, like when you partially apply a function from sanctuary or ramda:

var S =
	require("sanctuary") >
	caseOf((when) => {
		when(S.equals(3))(S.K("foo"));
		when(S.gt(3))(S.K("bar"));
		when(S.lt(3))(S.K("foobar"));
		when(S.K(true))(S.K("quack"));
	})(3);
("foo");

Give it a little more breathing room, like you might do in a language where spaces are function application, and you've got yourself some easily readable code:

var S =
	require("sanctuary") >
	caseOf((when) => {
		when(S.equals(3))(S.K("foo"));

		when(S.gt(3))(S.K("bar"));

		when(S.lt(3))(S.K("foobar"));

		when(S.K(true))(S.K("quack"));
	})(3);
("foo");

That is, "easily readable" if you're used to a more Haskell-like style. How you want to style your code is up to you.

Contribution

This package is open to pull requests. To set up the development environment, fork it, clone it, and run

yarn

in the project folder. This will install all necessary dependencies.

Run the command

yarn test

to run unit tests.

This project uses a slightly altered variant of sanctuary-style. You can lint the project using

yarn lint

Compatibility

This package is compatible all the way down to Node 6 and IE9. It might be compatible with older versions of Node/IE, but such guarantees cannot be made.

Type checking

This library features no actual type checking, other than that you call caseOf and caseOf.all as curried functions, as well as that when is passed actual functions as arguments.

As previously mentioned in the "motivation" section, this library is heavily inspired by the work of sanctuary-js, but there is one thing that is hard to integrate from their work: sanctuary-def type definitions. caseOf technically has a type signature of caseOf :: ((a -> Boolean) -> (a -> b) -> Undefined) -> a -> b, but this type signature is in practice completely impossible to enforce, even with the help of sanctuary-def. This is because the when function that is passed to the first argument of caseOf cannot be expected to check type signatures of each predicate and handler, given it only calls the handler of which the predicate is satisfied. Meaning this

> let fn = caseOf ((when) => {
.   when (x => x === 'foo') (x => x + 'bar')
.   when (x => x > 3) (x => x - 10)
. })

> fn (14)
4

> fn ('foo')
'foobar'

is perfectly valid, and will never complain, even if we utilized sanctuary-def in some way (which we didn't). This is a similar problem you will see with sanctuary's own ifElse:

> let fn = S.ifElse
.   (x => x !== 'foo')
.   (() => 'bar')
.   (() => 34)

> fn ('foo')
34

> fn (1)
'bar'

This is valid according to its signature, ifElse :: (a -> Boolean) -> (a -> b) -> (a -> b) -> a -> b, because in each case, b isn't checked for the function that doesn't get called. For input 'foo', b is String, but the result of the else function isn't checked unless it is run (unless it is a function defined with sanctuary-def). And for the second case, where input is 'bar', b is Number, but the then function isn't checked.

All in all, this is a limitation of runtime type checking.

Versioning

We use SemVer for versioning. For the versions available, see the tags on this repository.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details.

Further reading

• Elm Case-expression example
• Haskell Case-expression examples