🦁 hnt

Small library to safely access (hunt for 😉) deeply nested array values

Table of Contents

• Install
• Motivation
• Examples
• API
• Contribute
• License

Install

npm install hnt

To save hnt to you dependencies pass the --save flag.

You can also install the babel-plugin if you wish to compile away the hnt calls. This would allow you to get the ergonomic benefits of hnt without the hit to your bundle size. You can find the babel-plugin-hnt installation instructions here.

Motivation

Let's say we call an api and are given the following array as a response and we need to get the name of a student. That is pretty straightforward right?

let array = [
  { teachers: [{ name: "Jane Doe" }] },
  { students: [{ name: "divy", grades: [100, 99, 100] }] }
]

// let's access the name property on the first student
console.log(array[1].students[0].name)
// logs "divy"

But what happens if one time the service returns an array with some property missing or the structure changes or there is a typo in the property names?

let array = [
  { teachers: [{ name: "Jane Doe" }] },
  { mentors: [{ name: "John Doe" }] }
];

// let's access the name property on the first student
// wait! that doesn't exist! what will happen?
console.log(array[1].students[0].name)
// TypeError: undefined is not an object (evaluating 'array[1].students[0]')

We try to access something that we think exists but end up with a nasty type error! To mitigate this we might do something like the following - to make sure that everything we think exists actually exists before we access it

console.log(
  array[1] &&
    array[1].students &&
    array[1].students[0] &&
    array[1].students[0].name
);
// undefined

undefined isn't the value that we want but at least we don't get an error. However doing this every time that you need to access something in a (deeply) nested array is very tedious and verbose. This is what hnt solves.

// same array as before
let array = [
  { teachers: [{ name: "Jane Doe" }] },
  { mentors: [{ name: "John Doe" }] }
];

// import hnt for use
import hnt from "hnt"

// call the hnt function to access nested properties in the array
hnt(array, "[1].students[0].name", "Name not Found!")
// "Name not Found!"
// one function call allows us to safely access the nested property and allows us to specify a fallback value if the value we are originally requesting is undefined

hnt greatly simplifies the task of safely accessing (deeply) nested array values.

Example Usage

// import hnt
import hnt from 'hnt'
// our deeply nested array
let arr = [{ people: [{ name: "divy" }] }]
// if the value exists then hnt will return that value
hnt(arr, "[0].people[0].name", "--") // returns "divy"
// otherwise the fallback value will be returned
hnt(arr, "[1].persons[0].age", "--") // returns "--"
// this will also not error and instead will return the specified fallback value
hnt(arr, "[231].persons[312].otherValue", "woops") // returns "woops"

API

hnt(array: any[], accessPath: string, fallback: any)

hnt is a function which requires 3 values (array, accessPath, and fallback):

array: The array that you want to access

You can pass an valid array into hnt to access

examples:

// you can pass shallow arrays
let shallowArray = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
// or deeply nested complex arrays
let deepArray = [[[[[[[{ some: "value" }]]]]]]]
let nestedArray = [{ classes: [{ name: "Math class" }] }]

accessPath: The path to the value that you want from the array

The path that you want the value to should be passed in as a string. The path should also be relative to the array that you passed in as the first argument to hnt.

The access path string is relative in the sense that you don't include the base (the array you pass in as the first argument to hnt).

So to normally access the name property in the following array:

let nestedArray = [{ classes: [{ name: "Math class" }] }]

You would do the following

console.log(nestedArray[0].classes[0].name)
// logs "Math Class"

But for the access path string you shouldn't include the base (the starting array), since that is already passed in as an argument to hnt. So the proper access path for the nested array we looked at would be the following:

let accessPath = "[0].classes[0].name"

Some more examples:

let anotherNestedArray = [[{ classes: [{ name: "English class" }] }]]
let accessPath = "[0][0].classes[0].name"

let reallyNestedArray = [[[[[[[[
    { reallyNested: "value" }
]]]]]]]]
let accessPath = "[0][0][0][0][0][0][0][0].reallyNested"

let nestedArray = [
  [{ visitied: { cities: ["Jacksonville", "London", "Hyderabad"] } }]
]
// path to return the cities array
let citiesPath = "[0][0].visitied.cities"
// path to return "Jacksonville"
let jacksonvillePath = "[0][0].visitied.cities[0]"

fallback: What you want to return in the case that your specified access path for your array does not exist

You can define any value that you want as a fallback. If the path that you supplied returns undefined at any point then the fallback value will be returned fron hnt

examples:

// the fallback can be a string
let validFallback = "*"
// a number
let anotherValidFallback = 1
// an array
let yetAnotherValidFallback = [{ name: "divy" }]
// the fallback can be any value!

Contribute

PRs and issues are gladly welcomed!

If you haven't submitted a PR before try this helpful link http://makeapullrequest.com

License

MIT © Divyagnan Kandala