heroin

Strong and addictive dependency injection for JavaScript

Heroin decouples functions and methods from their arguments, making dynamic substitution a breeze.

API

heroin(fn, values) - inject into function

function add(a, b) { return a + b; }
var values = {
  a: 10,
  b: 22
};
var adder = heroin(add, values);
adder(); // 32

When injecting into a function, returns a new proxy function that can be called. The heroin(add, values) figures out that function add requires two arguments: a and b and looks them up in the passed values object.

You can keep changing the values (dependencies) in the dependency object, calling the proxy function without any additional work. Same code as above, continued

...
adder(); // 32
values.a = 100;
values.b = 2;
adder(); // 102

heroin(obj, 'methodName', values) - inject into method

Heroin is better when injecting into a method, because you do not need to keep separate proxy function - it replaces the original method.

var foo = {
  getName: function (name) {
    return name;
  }
};
var dependencies = {
  name: 'foo'
};

heroin(foo, 'getName', dependencies);
foo.getName(); // 'foo'

partial dependency injection

If the provided dependency object does not have own property for some argument name, it remains a free argument to the returned function. For example

function add(a, b, c) { return a + b + c; }
var values = {
  a: 10,
  c: 100
};
var adder = heroin(add, values);
// adder = function(a = 10, b, c = 100) ...
adder(4); // 114

This is useful if you plan to inject some common environment variables into the function, while leaving the rest call-specific:

QUnit.module('add', {
  setup: function () {
    this.log = function (value) { console.log(value); }
  }
})l
QUnit.test(function (log, assert) {
  // log is injected by module setup,
  // assert is an argument from QUnit framework
});

Read more about partial dependency injection in my blog post Partial Dependency Injection

2 injection points - removed

I have removed the runtime dependency injection, instead allowing partial dependency injection. For historical purposes, here is what 2 injection points had:

Heroin can inject dependencies during the proxy creation (when you call `heroin` on a function),
and during the function execution (when you call the proxy function)

    function add(a, b) { return a + b; }
    var values = {
      a: 10,
      b: 22
    };
    var adder = heroin(add, values);
    var runtimeValues = {
      b: 500
    };
    adder(runtimeValues); // 510

Details

Argument order does not matter

Let's inject name and message, while leaving log a free argument

getName: function (log, name, message) {
  log(name + ': ' + message);
}
var dependencies = {
  name: 'foo',
  message: 'hello'
};
heroin(foo, 'getName', dependencies);
foo.getName(console.log); // prints 'foo hello'

Or we could list arguments in different order, the result is the same getName: function (name, message, log) {

Why?

I was inspired by the simplicity of the reflection in JavaScript shown by @iammerrick in JavaScript Dependency Injection. Still I felt there was too much extra code to be useful: both Merrick's and AngularJs dependency injection requires an external executor function to actually call the function.

Heroin removes the external controller, instead directing parameters from dependency object into the appropriate named arguments. Simple.

Currently heroin is not minification safe

QUnit example

One thing that always bothered me about using QUnit is the inability to have module specific state without a separate closure where all variables are accessible to every unit test

(function () {
  var a = 10, b = 20;
  QUnit.module('example');
  QUnit.test(function () {
    // use a and b
  });
}());

I always wanted to have the ability to store test data in the module config and be able to explicitly inject into each unit test only the data it needs:

QUnit.module('example', {
  a: 10,
  b: 20
});
QUnit.test(function (a, b, assert) {
  assert(a === 10, 'qunit test has first argument "a"');
  assert(b === 20, 'qunit test has second argument "b"');
});

Let me show how easy it is to achieve the second goal using heroin. First, let's see the minimal QUnit runtime implementation that can collect and execute unit tests without any injection

// test collection
var modules = [];
var QUnit = {
  module: function (name, config) {
    modules.push({
      config: config,
      tests: []
    });
  },
  test: function (fn) {
    var m = modules[modules.length - 1];
    m.tests.push(fn); // 1
  }
};
// test execution
function runQunit() {
  modules.forEach(function (m) {
    m.tests.forEach(function (t) {
      t(console.assert);
    });
  });
}

All we do is collecting test functions and then running them in runQunit. Now let's add dynamic dependency injection. This requires single line change in line // 1

m.tests.push(heroin(fn, m.config));

By doing this we are injecting module config object into each unit tests during the collection, making unit tests like QUnit.test(function (a, b) { ... possible.

I implemented a qunit plugin qunit-inject to make production grade dependency injection for this wonderful testing framework.

Small print

Author: Gleb Bahmutov © 2014

• @bahmutov
• glebbahmutov.com
• blog

License: MIT - do anything with the code, but don't blame me if it does not work.

Spread the word: tweet, star on github, etc.

Support: if you find any problems with this module, email / tweet / open issue on Github

MIT License

Copyright (c) 2014 Gleb Bahmutov

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.