light-traits

Very light trait composition library for Javascript based on the new object manipulation API defined in Ecmascript-262, Edition 5

Install

npm install selfish

Require

var Trait = require('https!raw.github.com/Gozala/light-traits/v0.2.0/light-traits.js').Trait

Traits

Traits are a flexible language feature to factor out and recombine reusable pieces of code. They are a more robust alternative to multiple inheritance or mixins. They are more robust because name clashes must be resolved explicitly by composers, and because trait composition is order-independent (hence more declarative). To put it simply: if you combine two traits that define a method with the same name, your program will fail. Traits won't automatically give precedence to either one.

Light Traits

This library is inspired by an awesome traitsjs and pretty much follows it's design with a few slight differences:

Lighter

This implementation is more optimal in terms of object instantiation speed and memory footprint. This is achieved by not binding this pseudo variable in all accessors and methods of the composed object to an instance, which allows shared functions across objects, it also matches better overall behavior of the language. (BTW Similar can be achieved in traitjs as well in which case the claim of being more optimal will not longer be true, it's just not a default behavior at least not yet :)

Better ergonomics

This is a big statement and maybe not entirely correct but, few API differences makes working with traits less verbose and there for more pleasant. See examples section to find a difference.

Ecmascript 5 shims are not included

If your JavaScript engine does not comes with all the shiny Ecmascript 5 features this library is not going to work, luckily there are other libraries that shim JavaScript engines so that might be an option to go with.

Examples

var Trait = require('https!raw.github.com/Gozala/light-traits/v0.2.0/light-traits.js').Trait
  function ColorTrait(color) {
    return Trait({ color: function() { return color } })
  }
  var pointTrait = Trait.compose(
    ColorTrait('red'), // a color trait
    Trait({
      _x: Trait.required,
      _y: Trait.required,
      get x() { return this._x },
      get y() { return this._y },
      toString: function toString() { return '' + this.x + '@' + this.y }
    })
  )
  function Point(x, y) {
    // result inherits from object being passed to create
    return pointTrait.create({ _x: x, _y: y })
  }
  var point = Point(1, 7)
  point.color() // -> 'red'
  point.toString() // -> 1@7