I'm using Vogel.js to connect to Amazon DynamoDB. It's great, however one thing I'm struggling with is that a call such as
MyEntity.get({ my_key: keyValue }, callback);
will either return null if there is no results, or will return a wrapper object.
If I just want to read MyEntity as an object, it appears that in my callback I then have to do
const myEntityAsAnObject = queryResult.get();
however, this will throw if there was no results. So then I have to do some null checking before I do the get. Which I could use lodash or something for, but I'm wondering - is there a nicer way to do this? something like
MyEntity.getAsObject({ my_key: keyValue }, callback);
that will always return the unwrapped object?
The least-inelegant thing I can think of is a higher order function wrapper:
function attrs(callback) {
return function attrsInner(error, model) {
callback(error, model && model.get())
}
}
MyEntity.get({ my_key: keyValue }, attrs(callback));
You could also consider monkey patching the vogels model class prototype in a similar fashion, but I think that would violate the principle of least surprise for someone maintaining your code.
Related
I'm developing a Mongoose Query Helper plugin that provides the chainable method .search(query). On certain conditions, I want the query to return zero results, no matter how the other methods in the query builder chain behave. Turns out this isn't so easy as I have assumed.
Basically, I have the following code:
schema.query.search = function search(query) {
if ("query is invalid") {
// return no results => no easy way to achieve that?
}
return this.find(query);
};
Now, I want SomeModel.find({}).search(someQuery).exec() to return no results in case the query is invalid. I first tried to return this.limit(0), but turns out a limit of 0 is equivalent to setting no limit.
As a temporary solution, I do return this.find({ nonExistingField: 'something' }) which always results in no results, but this does seem a bit awkward and is probably also not so optimal in terms of performance as it triggers a search when no search is needed.
Thanks in advance for your help!
I have created a class in Typescript that implements a simple stream (FRP). Now I want to extend it with client side functionality (streams of events). To illustrate my problem, here is some pseudo-code:
class Stream<T> {
map<U>(f: (value: T) => U): Stream<U> {
// Creates a new Stream instance that maps the values.
}
// Quite a few other functions that return new instances.
}
This class can be used both on the server and on the client. For the client side, I created a class that extends this one:
class ClientStream<T> extends Stream<T> {
watch(events: string, selector: string): Stream<Event> {
// Creates a new ClientStream instance
}
}
Now the ClientStream class knows about map but the Stream class doesn't know about watch. To circumvent this, functions call a factory method.
protected create<U>(.....): Stream<U> {
return new Stream<U>(.....)
}
The ClientStream class overrides this function to return ClientStream instances. However, the compiler complains that ClientStream.map returns a Stream, not a ClientStream. That can be 'solved' using a cast, but besides being ugly it prevents chaining.
Example code that exhibits this problem:
class Stream {
protected create(): Stream {
return new Stream()
}
map() {
return this.create()
}
}
class ClientStream extends Stream {
protected create(): ClientStream {
return new ClientStream()
}
watch() {
return this.create()
}
}
let s = new ClientStream().map().watch()
This does not compile because according to the compiler, the stream returned from map is not a ClientStream: error TS2339: Property 'watch' does not exist on type 'Stream'.
I don't really like this pattern, but I have no other solution that is more elegant. Things I've thought about:
Use composition (decorator). Not really an option given the number of methods I would have to proxy through. And I want to be able to add methods to Stream later without having to worry about ClientStream.
Mix Stream into ClientStream. More or less the same problem, ClientStream has to know the signatures of the functions that are going to be mixed in (or not? Please tell).
Merge these classes into one. This is a last resort, the watch function has no business being on the server.
Do you have a better (more elegant) solution? If you have an idea that gets closer to a more functional style, I'd be happy to hear about it. Thanks!
What you're trying to do is called F-bounded polymorphism.
In TypeScript this is done via the this keyword. Take a look at Typescript's documentation for polymorphic this types. If you follow the documentation, you should be able to implement what you want :-)
Actually, just make sure that you're returning this in your member methods and you should be fine!
If I create an object property via Object.defineProperty() with a getter/setter method (an accessor descriptor) like:
var myObj = function myObj() {
var myFoo = 'bar';
Object.defineProperty(this, 'foo', {
enumerable: true,
get: function() {
return myFoo;
},
set: function(newValue) {
myFoo = newValue;
}
});
return this;
};
If I do something like var f = new myObj(); console.log(f) in Node, the output is something like:
{ foo: [Getter/Setter] }
console.log(f.foo) gets the proper 'bar' value, but is there a way to indicate that upon logging/inspecting, it should just run the getter and show the value?
First, it's important to understand why this happens. The logging functions don't run getters by design because your getter function could have side effects, whereas the logging function can guarantee that getting the value of a primitive doesn't.
When you pass an object to console.log, it's really just passing it off to the util module's inspect to format into human-readable text. If we look there, we see that the very first thing it does is check the property descriptor, and if the property has a getter, it doesn't run it. We can also see that this behavior is unconditional – there's no option to turn it off.
So to force getters to run, you have two options.
The simplest is to convert your object to a string before handing it off to console.log. Just call JSON.stringify(obj, null, 4), which will produce reasonably human-readable output (but not nearly as nice as util.inspect's). However, you have to take care to ensure that your object doesn't have any circular references and doesn't do something undesired in a toJSON function.
The other option is to implement a inspect function on your object. If util.inspect sees a function called inspect on an object, it will run that function and use its output. Since the output is entirely up to you, it's a much more involved to produce output that looks like what you'd normally get.
I'd probably start by borrowing code from util and stripping out the part about checking for getters.
This behavior is certainly intentional. I know I wouldn't want all the getter functions on an object running whenever I logged that object; that sounds like potential a debugging landmine, where debugging could alter the state of my program.
However, if indeed that is the behavior you want, you can add a new function:
Object.getPrototypeOf(console).logWithGetters = function(obj) {
var output = {};
var propNames = Object.getOwnPropertyNames(obj);
for(var i=0; i<propNames.length; ++i) {
var name = propNames[i];
var prop = Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(obj, name);
if(prop.get) {
output[name] = prop.get();
} else {
output[name] = obj[name];
}
}
// set output proto to input proto; does not work in some IE
// this is not necessary, but may sometimes be helpful
output.__proto__ = obj.__proto__;
return output;
}
This allows you to do console.logWithGetters(f) and get the output you want. It searches through an object's properties for getters (checking for the existence of Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptor(obj, propName).get) and runs them. The output for each property is stored in a new object, which is logged.
Note that this is a bit of a hacky implementation, as it doesn't climb the object's prototype chain.
I'm working with Dust.js and Node/Express. Dust.js documents the context helpers functions, where the helper is embedded in the model data as a function. I am adding such a function in my JSON data model at the server, but the JSON response to the browser doesn't have the function property (i.e. from the below model, prop1 and prop2 are returned but the helper property is not.
/* JSON data */
model: {
prop1: "somestring",
prop2: "someotherstring",
helper: function (chunk, context, bodies) {
/* I help, then return a chunk */
}
/* more JSON data */
I see that JSON.stringify (called from response.json()) is removing the function property. Not sure I can avoid using JSON.stringify so will need an alternative method of sharing this helper function between server/client. There probably is a way to add the helper functions to the dust base on both server and client. That's what I'm looking for. Since the Dust docs are sparse, this is not documented. Also, I can't find any code snippets that demonstrate this.
Thanks for any help.
send your helpers in a separate file - define them in a base context in dust like so:
base = dust.makeBase({foo:function(){ code goes here }})
then everytime you call your templates, do something like this:
dust.render("index", base.push({baz: "bar"}), function(err, out) {
console.log(out);
});
what this basically does is it merges your template's context into base, which is like the 'global' context. don't worry too much about mucking up base if you push too much - everytime you push, base recreates a new context with the context you supplied AND the global context - the helpers and whatever variables you defined when you called makeBase.
hope this helps
If you want stringify to preserve functions you can use the following code.
JSON.stringify(model, function (key, value) {
if (typeof(value) === 'function') {
return value.toString();
} else {
return value;
}
});
This probably doesn't do what you want though. You most likely need to redefine the function on the client or use a technology like nowjs.
Still finding my feet with Haxe and am looking for way to have a array-like read-only collection that I can specify a type for at compile time
So ideally I need something like the following:
var collection:Collection<ItemType>;
var item:ItemType = collection[3];//or
var other:ItemType = collection.getAt(3);
//also, it would be good if it was iterable
for (item in collection)
{
//stuff
}
So, exactly like an Array, but read only. Would anybody be able to give me a few pointers, please.
Many thanks
Well, you can't have read-only array access as such, but you can do it with methods:
class ReadonlyArray<T> {
var source:Array<T>;
public function new(source) this.source = source
inline function get(index) return source[index]
inline function iterator() return index.iterator()
}
The overhead should be barely noticeable.