o({})

Maker is a simple and powerful OO application toolkit for Javascript.

The central design goal of Maker is to provide a delcarative mechanism for defining classes, objects (instances of classes), and configurable command-line programs.

Maker supports both the classical and prototype patterns of implementing OO in a simple and unified manner. In addition, Maker is a Depedency Injection framework that allows for the creation of highly configurable re-usable software components and applications.

In particular, Maker provides mechanisms for:

• Defining objects and classes
• Defining re-usable software components and managing their lifecycle
• Defining top-level commandline interfaces with easy options parsing
• Writing synchronous-style programs with Fibers
• Managing application-level configuration
• Configuring and managing application logging

Using npm

% cd <your-app>
% npm install maker

From git:

% git clone [email protected]:objectlabs/maker.git
% cd <your-app>
% npm install <path-to-maker>

% node ./test/all.js

The core of Maker is comprised of four operators:

• The o operator makes objects
• The oo operator makes classes
• The _o operator resolves components by name
• The __ operator that spawns Fibers

The o operator is used to make objects. The operator takes a single object datum argument and returns an object based on the supplied specification. The specification is an object that consists of:

• An optional _type field, whose value may be either a Function or (representing a class constructor) or another object.

• A series of name / value pairs specifying the properties of the object

The empty object

var o = require('maker').o(module)

o({})

which is the same as

o({_type: Object})

which simply evaluates to {}.

Simple object

var o = require('maker').o(module)

o({a: 1,
   b: 2});

Specifying a class via a constructor Function (in the classical style)

var o = require('maker').o(module)

function Person() {
   this.name = "Some Person";
   this.email = null,
   this.age = 0;
}

o({_type: Person,
   name: "Jo Smith",
   email: "[email protected]",
   age: 35});

Specifying another object as a prototype

var o = require('maker').o(module)

var Person = o({
   name: "Some Person",
   email: null,
   age: 0
});

o({_type: Person,
   name: "Jo Smith",
   email: "[email protected]",
   age: 35});

Nested objects

var o = require('maker').o(module)

o({_type: Person,
   name: "Jo Smith",
   email: "[email protected]",
   age: 35,
   address = o({
      _type: Address
      street: "100 Foo St.",
      city: "San Francisco",
      state: "CA",
      zip: "93212"
   })
});

The oo operator is used to make classes. All oo expressions evaluate to a value that is a Function that can be used as a constructor. Like the o operator, the oo operator takes a single object argument. In this case the object specification is the specification for a class. The _type field can be used to specify superclass to extend and must be a Function value.

Classes defined with oo can optionally specify a constructor, which is a function to be used to initialize instance properties for objects of the defined class. Constructor functions are specified via the meta property _C.

Classes can define a super-class from which it extends via the _type meta property (the same way object specify which class they are an instance of when using the o operator).

If the class being defined has a super-class Maker will automatically chain constructors, calling the constructor of the super-class before calling the constructor of the class being defined.

You can use the _super method to call methods on your superclass. The method takes the name of the method as a string and returns a function.

var o = require('maker').o(module)
var oo = require('maker').oo(module)

var Animal = oo({
  _C: function() {
    this.name = "Some animal"
    this.age = 0
    this.weight = 0
  },
   
  say: function() {
    return this.name;
  }
})

var Dog = oo({
   _type: Animal,
   _C: function() {
    this.name = "Some Dog"
  },
  
  say: function() {
    return "woof: " + this._super('say')()    // delegating to superclass
  }
})

var fido = o({
   _type: Dog,
   name: "Fido",
   age: 3,
   weight: 10
})

Properties can be defined as simple fieldname / value pairs

o({
  name: "John Smith"
})

or they can be defined dynamically with getters and setters as you would with Javascript's Object.defineProperty

o({
  now: {
    $property: {
      get: function() {
        return new Date()
      }
    }
  }
})

Object creation via the o operator follows this sequence:

1. The _type field is evaluated. If it is a function it is then considered a constructor and a new instance of that Class is created. If it is an object that object is used as the new object's prototype. If no _type is supplied the default value of Object is used.
2. If the class defines a constructor (via _C) that constructor is called after calling the constructor of the class's _type (constructors defined by _C are automatically chained).
3. All field definitions in the object passed to the o operator are added to the newly created object
4. If the object has an _init method that method is called
5. The newly created object is returned

Example using _init:

o({
  port: 8080,
  app: null,
  db: null,
  _init: function() {
    this.app = express.createServer()
    this.app.listen(this.port)
  }
})

TBD

Maker allows for the easy creation of command line programs with built-in argument parsing. You can use the _main method to define a top-level entry point, or "main" function, to your application.

Example:

var o = require('maker').o(module);
var _o = require('maker')._o(module);

module.exports = o({
  port: null,
  verbose: false,
  _app: null,
  
  cmdargs: { // supports nomnom definitions (see https://github.com/harthur/nomnom)
    port: {
      abbr: "p",
      help: "port server should listen on",
      required: false,
      default: 8080
    },
    verbose: {
      abbr: "v",
      help: "enable verbose logging",
      required: false,
      default: false,
      property: true // set this value as a field on this object when parsed as a cmdline option
    }
  }
  
  _main: function(options) {
    this.port = options.port
    this._app = express.createServer()
    this._app.listen(this.port)
  }
})

You can then call your program from the commandline like this:

% node <path-to-your-module> <options>

Example:

% node SimpleCmdlineApp -h
Usage: node SimpleCmdlineApp [options]

Options:
   -p, --port      port server should listen on [8080]
   -v, --verbose   enable verbose logging  [false]

The arg-parser used by Maker is nomnom. For full documentation on how you specify cmdargs please see https://github.com/harthur/nomnom

TODO

• Document _o
• Document Fibers
• Revisit _super