object-immutable-set

Updated deeply nested objects in an immutable and type-safe way. Written and providing first class support for Typescript

Usage

yarn add object-immutable-set

or using npm

npm install object-immutable-set --save

import { set } from 'object-immutable-set'
 
type ComplexObjectType = {
  a: number,
  b: {
    c: {
      d: {
        deepProperty: string,
        deeper: {
          otherProperty: Array<number>,
        },
      },
    },
  },
}
 
const deeplyNestedObject: ComplexObjectType = {
  a: 1,
  b: {
    c: {
      d: {
        deepProperty: 'original value',
        deeper: {
          otherProperty: [1, 2, 3],
        },
      },
    },
  },
}
 
const updatedObject: ComplexObjectType = set(deeplyNestedObject, ['b', 'c', 'd', 'deepProperty'], 'updated value')
 
updatedObject.b.c.d.deepProperty // 'updated value'
deeplyNestedObject.b.c.d.deepProperty // 'original value'
updatedObject.b.c.d.deeper === deeplyNestedObject.b.c.d.deeper // true 
 

Note that the second parameter is type safe meaning that if you attempted to do something like:

const updatedObject: ComplexObjectType = set(deeplyNestedObject, ['b', 'oops', 'd', 'deepProperty'], 'updated value')
 

you will get a compilation error similar to:

error TS2345: Argument of type '["b", "oops", "d", "deepProperty"]' is not assignable to parameter of type '["b", "c", "d", "deepProperty", "length" | ...'.
  
86     const updatedObject: ComplexObjectType = set(deeplyNestedObject, ['b', 'oops', 'd', 'deepProperty'], 'updated value')
                                                                        ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Motivation

Sometimes you want to immutably update a deeply nested property, currently you are faced with either

• losing type safety using an existing javascript-only / non-typesafe option e.g _.set or object-path-immutable
• creating a deep clone and mutating it which can be expensive, and additionally will fail to re-use any of the previous object:

import { cloneDeep } from 'lodash'
 
const updatedObject = cloneDeep(originalObject)
updatedObject.a.b.c.d = 'This was a bit expensive'

• lots of error-prone boilerplate

const updatedObj = {
  ...originalObject,
  a: {
    ...originalObject.a,
    b: {
      ...originalObject.a.b,
      c: {
        ...originalObject.a.b.c,
        d: 'You can see where this is going'
      },
    },
  },
}
 

We found this to be particularly useful when working with React component state or, less often, a complex Redux reducer.

Contributing

Pull requests and issues welcome and encouraged!

Before submitting a PR please make sure that you:

• Check that everything compiles: yarn lint
• Run the tests: yarn test adding new tests to preserve the code coverage
• Run the linter: yarn lint to make sure new code conforms to the existing style