stairs

Organize your application's steps with stairs.

Here we are building an extraction process to extract data from some API.

var stairs = require('stairs');
 
var extractData = stairs('extract data')
  .step('query api', function ($, next) {
    http.get($.url, function (res) {
      $.body = '';
      res.on('data', function (chunk) { $.body = $.body + chunk; });
      res.on('end', next);
      res.on('error', next);
    });
  })
  .step('parse json', function ($) {
    try { $.data = JSON.parse($.body); } 
    catch(e) { return next(e) };
    finally { this.skip('skip to') }
  })
  .step('skip to', function ($, next) {
    this.next();
  })
  .step('grab element', function ($, next) {
    $.extracted = $.data.some.field;
    this.end();
  })
  .on('step', function (title, index, count) {
    console.log('on step "%s" which is %s/%s of process "%s"', title, index, count, this.title);
  });
  .on('error', function (err, $) { 
    console.error(err);
  }) 
  .on('done', function (err, $) {
    console.log('extracted %j', $.extracted);
  });

Next we apply our process to a list of urls.

var urls = [
  'http://some.api?id=1'
  'http://some.api?id=2'
  'http://some.api?id=2'
].forEach(function (url) {
  extractData({url: url});
});

Features

• Lean
• Simple
• Fast
• Easy

API

Stairs

var stairs = require('stairs');

Stairs#()

Creates a new instance.

var s = stairs();

Stairs#(title:String)

Creats a new instance with a title.

var s = stairs('extraction process');

Stairs#()

Executes the steps in the order in which they were added.

s();

Stairs#(cb:Function)

Executes the steps in the order in which they were added, and when done invokes the callback cb.

s(function ($) {
  console.log($);
});

Stairs#(scope:Object, cb:Function)

Executes the steps in the order in which they were added given a scope and when done invokes the callback cb.

s({}, function ($) {
  console.log($);
});

Stairs#run(scope:Object)

Executes the steps in the order in which they were added given a scope.

s.run({});

Stairs#run(cb:Function)

Executes the steps in the order in which they were added, and when done invokes the callback cb.

s.run(function (err, $) {
  console.log($);
});

Stairs#run(scope:Object, cb:Function)

Executes the steps in the order in which they were added given a scope and when done invokes the callback cb.

s.run({}, function (err, $) {
  console.log($);
});

Stairs#step(title:String, fn:Function)

Adds a step. The step function fn when invoked will get all the parameters in the scope. For most application you may only use one. The last argument will be the next function that will invoke the next step. You may pass an Error object when calling next in order to stop the flow of execution and handle the error.

s.step('query api', function ($, next) {
  http.get($.url, function (res) {
    $.body = '';
    res.on('data', function (chunk) { $.body = $.body + chunk; });
    res.on('end', next);
    res.on('error', next);
  });
});

Stairs#step(title:String, exclude:Boolean, fn:Function)

Conditionally adds a step.

s.step('query api', options.skipQuery, function ($, next) {
  http.get($.url, function (res) {
    $.body = '';
    res.on('data', function (chunk) { $.body = $.body + chunk; });
    res.on('end', next);
    res.on('error', next);
  });
});

The "query api" step will not be added if options.skipQuery is true.

Stairs.Context#skip(title:String)

You can skip to a particular step given the title of that step by calling this.skip('skip to').

s.step('parse json', function ($, next) {
  try { $.data = JSON.parse($.body); } 
  catch(e) { return next(e) };
  finally { this.skip('skip to') }
});

Stairs.Context#next()

You can invoke next from the callback parameter next or this.next().

s.step('skip to', function ($, next) {
  this.next();
});

Stairs.Context#end()

You can end the process by calling this.end() in your handler.

s.step('grab element', function ($, next) {
  console.log('the data %j', $.data);
  $.extracted = $.data.some.field;
  this.end();
});

Events

step

The step event is triggered for each step when being executed.

s.on('step', function (title, i, count) {
  console.log('we are processing step "%s" which is step %s of %s', title, i, count);
});

done

The done event is triggered when the process is complete.

s.on('done', function ($) {
  console.log('done.');
});

error

The error event is triggered whenever we receive an error.

s.on('error', function (err, $) {
  console.error(err);
});

Installation and Environment Setup

Install node.js (See download and install instructions here: http://nodejs.org/).

Clone this repository

> git clone [e-mail]:turbonetix/stairs.git

cd into the directory and install the dependencies

> cd stairs
> npm install && npm shrinkwrap --dev

Running Tests

Install coffee-script

> npm install coffee-script -g

Tests are run using grunt. You must first globally install the grunt-cli with npm.

> sudo npm install -g grunt-cli

Unit Tests

To run the tests, just run grunt

> grunt spec

TODO