Polyprint

A dead simple schema builder.

There are certainly better alternatives (namely Zod) that provide actual type validation in TypeScript, but Polyprint is dependency free, lightweight, and small. By forgoing typecasting, Polyprint is far simpler and more JavaScript focused. It provides a basic syntax to ensure forms and objects have the right structure, and that's it.

Installation

>>> pnpm install polyprint

import { p } from "polyprint";

Usage

You can use schemas to better define your data, which can be useful in form validation. In general, PolySchemas are composed of a dictionary with keys and values equal to some PolyType, PolySchema, or another dictionary.

This is a schema.

const schema = new PolySchema("Document Schema", {
  _createdAt: PolyTypes.instanceOf(Date),
  _updatedAt: PolyTypes.instanceOf(Date),
  title: PolyTypes.string,
  body: PolyTypes.string,

  // nested schema
  user: new PolySchema("Document Schema Child", {
    name: PolyTypes.string,
  }),

  // this will also work (but will not instantiate a new PolySchema)
  user: {
    name: PolyTypes.string,
  },
});

We also provide an alternative export p, which provides methods to instantiate PolySchema, PolyType, and PolyCondition using a single namespace. This can result in more concise code at the cost of readability.

const schema = new p.Schema("Document Schema", {
  _createdAt: p.instanceOf(Date),
  _updatedAt: p.instanceOf(Date),
  title: p.string,
  body: p.string,

  // nested schema
  user: new PolySchema("Document Schema Child", {
    name: p.string,
  }),

  // this will also work (but will not instantiate a new PolySchema)
  user: {
    name: p.string,
  },
});

Validating data

validate allows you to validate some data. It also accepts several arguments beyond a data structure, including verbose and strict.

verbose: Will return an array of errors instead of true or false (defaults to false)
strict: Enable strict mode (discussed below, defaults to schema value)

schema.validate({
  title: "Hello World",
}); // => true

schema.validate({
  title: 0,
}); // => false

schema.validate(
  {
    title: 0,
  },
  {
    strict: true,
  }
); // => false because strict mode is enabled

Strict Mode

By default, schemas are NOT in strict mode, which means it will ignore extra or missing keys. You can easily enable or disable strict mode, or override your choice when you call validate.

Method 1: Create a new schema with strict mode by default

new PolySchema("Untitled Schema", {}, { strict: true });

Method 2: Change strict mode later

schema.strict = true;

Method 3: Override in validate

schema.validate({}, { strict: true });

Flexible Types

In addition to basic primitives like number and string, you can "compose" types with enum and union.

Union is like "or", so flexibleType can either be a string or a number.

{
  flexibleType: PolyTypes.union(PolyTypes.string, PolyTypes.number);
}

Enums are for literal values, so enumType can be "RED", "BLUE", or "GREEN" (but nothing else).

{
  enumType: PolyTypes.enum("RED", "BLUE", "GREEN");
}

You can also create custom types (perhaps for a more custom situation) with PolyCondition.