DepRes

Dependency graph resolution

What?

A very small, simple module that allows you to resolve dependency graphs. You can feed it with a tree or an id map and it will output an ordered array of nodes or id's sorted bottom-up.

Example

Let's say you've got the following dependency graph:

      +–––+
      | A |
  +–––o–––o–––+
  |           |
  v           v
+–––+       +–––+
| B |<–––+  | C |
+–o–+    |  +–o–+
  |      |    |
  |      |    v
  |      |  +–––+
  |      +––o D |
  |         +–o–+
  |           |
  v           v
+–+–+       +–––+
| E |<––––––o F |
+–––+       +–––+

• A depends on B and C
• B depends on E
• C depends on D
• D depends on B and F
• E has no dependencies
• F depends on E

DepRes will output ['E', 'B', 'F', 'D', 'C', 'A'] since this is (one of two) safe ways to traverse the nodes making sure that dependencies are present before their dependants.

Installation

Npm

npm install depres

Bower

bower install depres

Download

Or you can download the files from the /dist directory

Linking/requiring

AMD

define(['depres'], function(depres){
  //use depres here
});

CommonJS / Node

var depres = require('depres');

Global object

<script src="depres.min.js"></script>

Now depres is available as a global object.

Dependencies

DepRes depends on the [Lodash][Lodash] lib, when using bower or npm the dependency will automatically downloaded. If you choose to use the script-tag, please add the lodash js file in a similar fashion.

Usage

DepRes exposes two methods: depres.resolveTree and depres.resolveMap. A tree should consist out of nodes with an id field and a deps field which contains its dependencies in an Array. A Node object is also exposed as depres.Node, but you don't have to use it. As long as your objects contain a string id and an array deps you're good to go.

Example with nodes

Let's generate the above dependency graph as a tree using the Node object:

var N = depres.Node;
 
var A = new N( 'A' );
var B = new N( 'B' );
var C = new N( 'C' );
var D = new N( 'D' );
var E = new N( 'E' );
var F = new N( 'F' );
 
//Node objects have a `add` method which allows you to add one or more dependencies at once
A.add(B, C); //Note: these are Node instances, NOT id's [!]
B.add(E);
C.add(D);
D.add(B, F);
//E has no dependencies
F.add(E);
 
var result = depres.resolveTree( A ); //pass the root node
console.log(result.resolved);
/*
output:
[ { id: 'E', deps: [] },
  { id: 'B', deps: [Object] },
  { id: 'F', deps: [Object] },
  { id: 'D', deps: [Object] },
  { id: 'C', deps: [Object] },
  { id: 'A', deps: [Object] } ],
*/

Example with an id map

var map = {
  'A' : ['B', 'C'],
  'B' : ['E'],
  'C' : ['D'],
  'D' : ['B', 'F'],
  'E' : [],
  'F' : ['E']
};
 
var result = depres.resolveMap( map ); //pass the id map
console.log(result.resolved);
 
//outputs: ['E', 'B', 'F', 'D', 'C', 'A']

Result

The result of resolveTree and resolveMap is an object with following properties:

• resolved: a sorted Array containing the resolved nodes or ids
• unresolved: a sorted Array containing the unresolved nodes or ids
• aborted: a Boolean to indicate the failure of the resolution

The unresolved array will only be populated when something went wrong, it contains the nodes/id's that were being processed before the script aborted, i.e. it shows you a path to the problematic node/id. Resolution is aborted whenever the script encounters a circular dependency.

resolved contains the arrray with the nodes or ids in a safe-loading order.

License

Released under MIT license