Cerise

Intuitive Dependency Injection (DI) library for Node.js, written in JavaScript and weighing less than 10 KB. Ironically, Cerise does not depend on any package.

API documentation -- Examples -- FAQ

Installation

Install with npm or yarn

$ npm install cerise
$ yarn add cerise

Both CommonJS and ES modules builds are included; the latter will be automatically selected if your build system supports it.

Usage

Using Cerise is dead simple. There are two concepts you'll need to understand first: containers and factories.

createContainer

A container (also known as an injector) is a master object that knows how to create services, thanks to factories.

const { createContainer, constant, factory, service } = require('cerise');
 
// Create a container and immediately register a factory
// for the `name` service.
const container = createContainer({
  package_name: constant('cerise'),
});
 
// You can also register a service for an existing container.
container.register('package_name', constant('cerise'));
 
// You can retrieve services using either container as a
// function, or its `proxy` property.
assert('cerise' === container('package_name'));
assert('cerise' === container.proxy.package_name);

There are multiple ways to declare a service: using the constant, factory and service helpers.

constant

When using constant you cannot depend on an other service. You can register any value: a number, string, function, etc.

container.register('base_url', constant('https://npmjs.com'));
container.register('concat', constant((...args) => args.join('')));
 
assert('string' === typeof container('base_url'));
assert('function' === typeof container('concat'));

factory

If you need to depend on an other service, use a factory. factory takes a function that will be passed container.proxy (which can be destructured to access other services) and returns a service.

container.register(
  'package_url',
  factory(proxy => {
    return proxy.concat(proxy.base_url, '/', proxy.package_name);
  }),
);
 
// Using destructuring
container.register(
  'package_url',
  factory(({ concat, base_url: baseUrl, package_name: packageName }) => {
    return concat(baseUrl, '/', packageName);
  }),
);
 
// Alternatively, call the proxy as a function
container.register(
  'package_url',
  factory(inject => {
    return inject('concat')(inject('base_url'), '/', inject('package_name'));
  }),
);
 
assert('https://npmjs.com/cerise' === container('package_url'));

You'll notice that constant(x) is equivalent to factory(() => x): it's just sugar.

service

Lastly, service is passed a class and will return an instance on retrieval. Use it if you're more familiar with OOP.

class PackageUrl {
  constructor({ concat, base_url: baseUrl }) {
    this._concat = concat;
    this._baseUrl = baseUrl;
  }
 
  get(packageName) {
    return this._concat(this._baseUrl, '/', packageName);
  }
}
 
container.register('package_url', service(PackageUrl));
 
assert('https://npmjs.com/cerise' === container('package_url').get('cerise'));

Once again, it's just sugar: service(T) is equivalent to factory(proxy => new T(proxy)).

Scopes

Oftentimes you'll want to create a scope from a container. Scopes inherit their parent and their registered service, but can also have their own service. For instance, if you're using Express, you might want to have a master container to store your database connexion, and another container for request-specific data.

const express = require('express');
const { Database } = require('sqlite3');
const { createContainer, constant } = require('cerise');
 
const app = express();
const container = createContainer({
  db: constant(new Database(':memory:')),
});
 
// For each request, create a scope and fetch session data.
app.use((req, res, next) => {
  const id = req.get('x-session-id');
  const db = container('db');
 
  req.scope = container.scope();
 
  db.get('select * from sessions where id = ?', [id], (err, session) => {
    // Only alter the request scope, not the parent container
    req.scope.register('session', constant(session));
    next();
  });
});
 
// Session data is available on child scope.
app.get('/session', (req, res) => {
  res.json(req.scope('session'));
});
 
// Parent container services are also available on child scope.
app.get('/time', (req, res) => {
  const db = req.scope('db');
 
  db.get('select current_timestamp as time', (err, { time }) => {
    res.json({ time });
  });
});

Lifetimes

default lifetime

By default (except for constant) the factory will be called each time you wish to retrieve a value from a factory.

// Each resolution will result in a new Thing instance being created.
container.register('thing', service(class Thing {}));
 
const foo = container('thing');
const bar = container('thing');
 
assert(foo !== bar);

singletons

You may however wish to specify a lifetime to your factory in order to cache its result.

// Now the first instance will be cached and returned each time.
container.register('thing', service(class Thing {}).singleton());
 
const foo = container('thing');
const bar = container('thing');
 
assert(foo === bar);

scoped

Singletons only make sense on the root container; if you wish to cache a service for scopes you will want to use the scoped lifetime qualifier:

const winston = require('winston');
 
container.register(
  'logger',
  constant(
    winston.createLogger({
      transports: winston.transports.Console(),
    }),
  ),
);
 
// Create a scope on every request
app.use((req, res, next) => {
  req.scope = container.scope();
  next();
});
 
// Register a *scoped* logger (with request id metadata)
app.use((req, res, next) => {
  req.scope.register(
    'reqlog',
    factory(({ logger }) =>
      logger.child({ requestId: req.get('x-request-id') }),
    ).scoped(),
  );
  next();
});
 
// Logging middleware
app.use((req, res, next) => {
  const start = Date.now();
  const logger = req.scope('reqlog');
 
  req.on('finish', () => {
    const elapsed = Date.now() - start;
 
    logger.info('[%s] %s %s', elapsed, req.method, req.path);
  });
 
  next();
});

Saving and restoring state

Root containers' state can be saved and restored which can be useful for testing. For instance, in Mocha's beforeEach and afterEach hooks:

describe('My API', () => {
  beforeEach(() => container.save());
  afterEach(() => container.restore());
 
  it('...', () => {
    // package_url service will be 'nope' but only for this particular test
    container.register('package_url', constant('nope'));
  });
});

Utils

Middlewares: Cerise provides middlewares for Express and Koa.
See the API documentation.

Controllers: since calling req.scope gets old really fast, Cerise also provides a controller helper -- with an async error handler for convenience. Pass it a callback, and it will get called with req.scope.proxy, req, res and next.
See the API documentation.

FAQ

How to overwrite a parent service in a scope?

You can register a service with the same name:

const parent = createContainer();
parent.register('scopeName', constant('parent'));
 
const child = parent.scope();
child.register('scopeName', constant('child'));
 
assert('parent' === parent('scopeName'));
assert('child' === child('scopeName'));

Can a child scope service depend on a parent scope service of the same name?

Yes, but you cannot depend directly on the parent service.

parent.register('breadcrumb', constant('/'));
 
// This will break: `breadcrumb` on the child cannot depend on `breadcrumb`.
child.register(
  'breadcrumb',
  factory(({ breadcrumb }) => breadcrumb + 'child/'),
);
 
// Workaround #1: access parent scope directly
child.register('breadcrumb', factory(() => parent('breadcrumb') + 'child/'));
 
// Workaround #2 (preferred): register the parent as a child service
child.register('$parent', constant(parent.scope));
child.register(
  'breadcrumb',
  factory(({ $parent: { breadcrumb } }) => breadcrumb + 'child/'),
);

Examples

Head over to the examples directory for in-depth examples.

Contributing

Constructive feedback is always welcome! Feel free to create issues if you have any question, suggestion or bug reports. A pull request is also always appreciated.

Clone this repository, run npm install or yarn to install the development dependencies, launch npm test -- -w or yarn test -w and start hacking!

Before you submit your pull request, please make sur you've run Prettier (npm run lint or yarn lint) and that your test coverage is at 100% (npm run coverage or yarn coverage).