Assurance - We've got you covered!

Assurance is a validation library, which:

• Provides a clean & pretty API
• Returns meaningful error objects, not error messages
• Accumulates errors, doesn't bail straight away
• Loves nested objects
• Is general purpose - ish
• Is resource conservative
• Doesn't use schemas
• Doesn't throw
• Works in the browser

Install

Node

npm install assurance

Or in the browser

component install danmilon/assurance

Also available as standalone scripts assurance.js or assurance.min.js (global var assurance)

Examples

When things go right.

var assurance = require('assurance')

var o = {
  name:  'john',
  age:   16,
  adult: false,
  likes: ['sports', 'music', 'coding'],
  schedule: {
    monday:  ['school'],
    tuesday: ['sleep'],
    wednesday: {
      start: '10:30',
      end:   '11:15'
    }
  }
}

var assure = assurance(o)

assure.me('name').is('string').len(100)
assure.me('age').is('number').isInt().gt(0)
assure.me('adult').is('boolean')

// can nest in arrays
assure.me('likes', function (hobby) {
  // I'm passed each single element
  hobby.is('string')
})

// can do validations and then ntest
assure.me('schedule').is('object').nest(function () {
  // now i'm validating john's schedule
  assure.me('monday').is('array')
  assure.me('tuesday').is('array')

  // nest in objects too
  assure.me('wednesday', function () {
    // now we're validating internal fields
    assure.me('start').is('string').matches(/\d\d:\d\d/)
  })
})

console.log(assure.end())
// []

or wrong

var assurance = require('assurance')

var malicious = {
  name:     'Eve',
  hobbies:  ['WHERE', 1, '=', 1],
  integer:  3.14,
  positive: -666
}

var assure = assurance(malicious)

assure.me('name').is('string')

assure.me('hobbies', function (hobby) {
  hobby.is('string')
})

assure.me('integer').is('number').isInt()
assure.me('positive').is('number').isInt().gt(0)

console.log(assure.end())
// [ { type: 'InvalidType',
//     expected: 'string',
//     is: 'number',
//     message: 'value is of type number but string was expected',
//     param: 'hobbies[1]' },
//   { type: 'InvalidType',
//     expected: 'string',
//     is: 'number',
//     message: 'value is of type number but string was expected',
//     param: 'hobbies[3]' },
//   { type: 'InvalidValue',
//     message: 'value must be an integer',
//     is: 3.14,
//     param: 'integer' },
//   { type: 'InvalidValue',
//     message: 'expected a value greater than 0',
//     is: -666,
//     param: 'positive' } ]

How to invoke

var assure = assurance(object, onlyFields, alias)

• object: The object to validate
• onlyFields: Optional array of strings. Only fields in this array will validated (top-level only)
• alias: Optional object mapping object fields to other names, in case a field has errors (top-level only)

Remember that internally, a single assurance instance is used. Whenever you call .assurance(...), the internal instance is merely brought to a state as it would be if it was a new object. Due to the single-threaded execution of node, and the fact that most times you want to validate only one object at a time, by following this approach, we don't have to create a new Assurance object every time we need to perform validations and then throw it away through garbage collection.

onlyFields example

var o = {
  integer: 'not an integer',
  string:  1337
}

var assure = assurance(o, ['string'])

assure.me('integer').is('number').isInt()
assure.me('string').is('string')

console.log(assure.end())
// [ { type: 'InvalidType',
//     expected: 'string',
//     is: 'number',
//     message: 'value is of type number but string was expected',
//     param: 'string' } ]

alias example

var o = {
  kittenParam: 'meew'
}

var assure = assurance(o, { kittenParam: 'kitten' })

assure.me('kittenParam').is('number')

console.log(assure.end())
// [ { type: 'InvalidType',
//     expected: 'number',
//     is: 'string',
//     message: 'value is of type string but number was expected',
//     param: 'kitten' } ]

me(field, [fn]), #check(field, [fn])

Declares that the following validation calls are about field. .check is an alias, because .me as a name does not make sense when it is not assure.me(). if fn is passed, it instantly calls .nest(fn).

hasErrors()

Returns a boolean indicating whether there are any validation errors yet.

assurance({ age: 5 }).check('age').is('number').hasErrors()
// false

end() / errors()

Returns the errors accumulated so far. .errors() is an alias.

assurance({ age: 'a' }).check('age').is('number').end()
// [ { type: 'InvalidType' ... } ]

assurance({ age: 5 }).check('age').is('number').end()
// []

throw()

Throws the first error caught.

assurance({ age: 'a' }).check('age').is('number').throw()
// Error: value is of type string but number was expected

optional()

Indicates that the current field being validated is optional

assurance({}).check('age').optional().is('number').end()
// []

default(val)

If the currently validated field is missing, a default value is assigned

var o = {}
assurance(o).check('age').default(18).is('number').min(18).end()
// []
console.log(o)
// { age: 18 }

nest(fn)

Nests inside an object or array, to validate their inner elements.

assurance({ bands: ['cranberries', 'the doors', 666] }).check('bands').nest(function (band) {
  band.is('string')
}).end()
// [ { type: 'InvalidType',
//     expected: 'string',
//     is: 'number',
//     message: 'value is of type number but string was expected',
//     param: 'bands[2]' } ]

custom(fn)

Allows fn to perform custom checks on the current value being validated. For convention, except the value, fn is passed the built-in errors which you can use and return. But this is not a restriction, fn can return any object which captures the error in whatever way you want.

assurance({ name: 'dan' }).check('name').is('string').custom(function (name, errors) {
  if (name[0] === name[0].toLowerCase()) {
    return new errors.InvalidValue('expected name to be titled (ie George)', name)
  }
}).end()
// [ { type: 'InvalidValue',
//     message: 'expected name to be titled (ie George)',
//     is: 'dan',
//     param: 'name' } ]

extend(type, [name], fn)

Adds a new validator or sanitizer.

• type: validator or sanitizer
• name: name of the new method (ie assure.me('field')._name_(...))
• fn: validator or sanitizer function

If name is omitted, then the name of the function will be used.

fn is first passed the value of the field currently being validated, and then the rest of the arguments passed when the method was invoked.

• If fn is a validator, in case of error, it must return an object.
• If fn is a sanitizer, should return the new value, if needed.

assurance.extend('sanitizer', function toUpperCase(val) {
  return val.toUpperCase()
})

Validators

.is(type)            typeof val === type (extra type 'array')
.gt(number)          val > number
.lt(number)          val < number
.max(number)         val <= number
.min(number)         val >= number
.equals(other)       val === other
.notEquals(other)    val !== other
.required()          val !== undefined && val !== null
.oneOf(index)        val exists in index
.isEmail()           val has an email format
.isInt()             val is an integral number
.matches(regex)      val matches regex
.len(min, max)       val.length between min and max
.len(max)            val.length at most max
.consistsOf(index)   val contains only stuff found in index

Sanitizers

.toInt()    number & string to integers
.toFloar()  string to float
.trim()     trims whitespace from left & right

Indexes (array/object lookup)

A few methods accept an index (oneOf, consistsOf, etc). This can be either an array, or an object and what you use has performance impacts. For example, if you'd like to check whether a string is one of many many strings, then an array is a bad option O(n). Instead you can use an object (hash) as an index, which has O(1) lookup. Obviously this makes sense for lookups amongst more than a couple thousand elements.

var array = ['option1', 'option2']

var object = {
  option1: 1,
  option2: 1
}

var assure = assurance({ str: 'option3' })

assure.me('str').oneOf(array) // O(n)
assure.me('str').oneOf(object) // O(1)

Tests

npm test
make test

TODO

• browser support
• moar validators & sanitizers
• human readable messages