trnsd

naivistic but async-enabled transducer (micro-)library

The transducer approach can be used to improve the 'ordinary' array map an filter operations that we know and love.

1. by not having to create a new collection for each map/filter operation (this can improve efficiency with large collections, and is the motivating example in various blog posts, as well as [1])
2. making it more convenient to use async functions in map and filter. This means that you don't need to wrap your map result in Promise.all. The goal in this case is to improve readability rather than speed (Two approaches are possible; either to wait for every promise, so items will be processed sequentially. The other is to start processing every input alement at once.)

Transducer constructors

There are two constructors map and filter nothing special here

Basic interface

The basic interface is a function tr_array which expects an array (or another type of iterable object) of input values followed by any number of maps or filters. It traverses (hence the tr_ prefix) the input collection, passes each element through the provided stages, and returns a new array with the results.

 const { tr_array, map, filter } = require('trnsd')
, numbers = [1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
 
const result = tr_array(
  numbers,
  map(x => x * 50),
  map(x => x + 1),
  filter(x => x < 400),
  filter(x => Math.floor(x/100) % 2 === 0)
)
 
// [ 51, 201, 251 ]

Async interface

There are two variants; both return a Promise that resolves to a new array with the results.

In sequence

const { tr_async, map, filter } = require('trnsd')
const { wait } = require('./wait')
, numbers = [1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
 
tr_async(
  numbers,
  map(x => x * 50),
  map(x => Promise.resolve(x + 1)),
  filter(x => wait(400).then(() => x < 400)),
  filter(x => Math.floor(x/100) % 2 === 0)
)
.then(console.log) // [ 51, 201, 251 ]

In parallel

use tr_par instead of tr_async. Parallel can be nice for speed, but error handling can be tricky: Similar to using Promise.all, your .catch handler is called at most once — if errors happen after the first one, they are ignored!

Note that

• Functions passed to map and filter may return a value or a Promise... But:
• if Promises are involved, use tr_async or trnsd_async
• tr_async and tr_par always return a Promise
• tr_array dies in flames if a Promise is encountered. (UnhandledPromiseRejectionWarning.)

trnsd, trnsd_async and trnsd_par interface

these are proper "transduce" type functions, see examples/example_custom.js

References

[1] Egghead transducer tutorial (https://egghead.io/courses/quickly-transform-data-with-transducers)