the-box

0.0.2 • Public • Published

Deprecated

This project is deprecated. Use easy-app instead.

the-box

Can you see what's wrong with this code?

var db = require('db')
var user = require('user')
var res = require('response')
 
db.collection('users').find({id: {$in: user.friends}}, function (err, docs) {
  if (err) return done(err)
  res.json(docs)
})

Actually it is a very neat piece of code except that there is no way to require response with node.js require system.

This project is about making the above snippet fully functional and it seems it succeeded. It completely removes artificial boundary between static, boot-time, request-time, whatever-time dependencies allowing you super easily define as many layers as you want while completely freeing modules from dependency issues. This project was inspired by The-Kiln and is nothing but an implementation of dependency based computational model :) similar to what is used by build systems (like rake, make) and by node.js require.

How it looks like

var express = require('express')
var App = require('the-box')
var app = new App
 
app.set('connection-string', 'localhost/mydb,192.168.1.1')
 
app.def('db', function (get) {
  return require('monk')(get('connection-string'))
})
 
app.def('user', function (get, done) {
  var req = get('request')
  get('db').collection('users').findOne({
    id: req.param('user')
  }, done)
})
 
app.def('list-friends', function (get, done) {
  var db = get('db')
  var user = get('user')
  var res = get('response')
 
  db.collection('users').find({id: {$in: user.friends}}, function (err, docs) {
    if (err) return done(err)
    res.json(docs)
  })
})
 
app.def('init', ['db'])
 
express().use(function (req, res, next) {
  app.eval('init', function () {
    Object.create(app)
      .set('request', req)
      .set('response', res)
      .onerror(next)
      .eval('list-friends')
  })
}).listen(3000)

Explanation

The app.def() method defines what is internally called a box, aka task (in rake), aka module (in node).

Once the box was defined we can evaluate it.

app.eval('db', function (db) {
  // use db instance here
})

A value of evaluated box is cached, so subsequent evals do not result in repeated calls to the definition function.

Another way to define box is to use app.set() method

app.set('db-connection-string', 'localhost/mydb,192.168.1.1')

We can get a value of evaluated box with app.get(). It returns undefined if box doesn't exist or not yet evaluated.

Boxes themselves also can get values:

app.def('db', function (get) {
  return require('monk')(get('db-connection-string'))
})

and framework ensures that before evaluation of the box all its dependencies were evaluated. There are two ways to specify dependencies

// list them explicitly
app.def('foo', ['bar', 'baz'], function (get) {
  return get('bar') + get('baz')
})
 
// or allow to infer them from the function source
app.def('foo', function (get) {
  return get('bar') + get('baz') // it's evident that we depend on bar and baz
})

Of course, boxes can be asynchronous

app.def('user', function (get, done) {
  var req = get('request')
  get('db').collection('users').findOne({
    id: req.param('user')
  }, done)
})

Perhaps the most strongest point of the-box is how it manages dependency levels. You can just create a new app instance with Object.create(app) and this instance will inherit all box definitions and every evaluated box will remain evaluated while subsequent manipulations (evals, defs, etc) with new instance will not change the parent app.

app.eval('init', function () {
  Object.create(app) // we have app.run() for this, but Object.create is what going on
    .set('request', req)
    .set('response', res)
    .eval('something')
})

Misc details

All boxes are evaluated sequentially.

paths

There is a concept of path

app.def('a/b/c', function (get) {
  get('a/b').should.equal('a/b')
  get('./d').should.equal('a/b/c/d')
  get('../x').should.equal('a/b/x')
})
app.at('a/b')
  .def('./c', fn)
  .set('../d', val)
// is the same as
app
  .def('a/b/c', fn)
  .set('a/d', val)

this of the box is set to app.at('box/path')

app.def('a/b', function () {
  if (something) this.eval('./c') // eval a/b/c if something
})

Error handling

Errors from boxes (both sync and async) are catched and can be handled.

app.def('foo/bar/baz', function () {
  throw new Error('foo error')
})
 
app.onerror('foo/bar/baz', function (err) {
  err.message.should.equal('foo error')
})

Errors are bubbling. So if the handler for foo/bar/baz wouldn't be defined the handler for foo/bar would be checked and so on up to the root level handler (app.onerror(fn)) which by default just throws a given error. It is possible to rethrow catched errors

app.def('foo/bar/baz', function () {
  throw 'error'
})
 
app.onerror('foo/bar/baz', function (err) {
  err.should.equal('error')
  throw 'baz'
})
 
app.onerror('foo/bar', function (err, raise) {
  err.should.equal('baz')
  raise('bar')
  // for convenience raise function can be used as a node style callback
  // raise(null, 'bar') will not throw
})
 
app.onerror('foo', function (err, raise) {
  err.should.equal('bar')
})
 
app.onerror(function () {
  should.fail("shouldn't be called since we are not rethrowing in foo handler")
})
 
app.eval('foo/bar/baz')

Hooks

It is possible to define before and after hooks for any box. Before hooks are ordinal boxes which are executed before "main" box and it's dependencies. After hooks are also boxes (they can have dependencies, etc) but their signature is slightly different.

app.def('foo', function () {
  return 'foo'
})
 
app.after('foo', function (get, val) {
  val.should.equal('foo')
  // we can change the result value of the box by returning
  // something different from undefined
  return 'bar'
})
 
app.eval('foo', function (val) {
  val.should.equal('bar')
})

An async version of after hook has (get, val, done) signature.

It is not important when to define hooks. They can be defined before or after corresponding boxes.

// Example: Automatically parse the request body
var bodyParser = express.bodyParser()
 
app.after('request', function (get, req, next) {
  bodyParser(req, req.res, next)
})
 
function server (req, res) {
  app.run()
    .set('request', req)
    .def('task', function (get) {
      get('request').should.have.property('body')
    })
    .eval('task')
}

Installation

Via npm

npm install the-box

To run tests first install dev dependencies and then run npm test command.

npm install -d
npm test

Misc

express-in-the-box project is an integration of awesome express request-response prototypes and router with the-box container.

License

(The MIT License)

Copyright (c) 2012 Eldar Gabdullin eldargab@gmail.com

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

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Version

0.0.2

License

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  • eldar