interpolatable

A super tiny ( < 600 bytes minzipped) package that allows you to quickly (⚡) interpolate any values into any other value!

Installation

npm install interpolatable
## or
yarn add interpolatable

Or directly via the browser:

<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/interpolatable"></script>
<script>
  const descriptor = 'Hello {{user}}!';
  const interpolate = interpolatable(descriptor);
  const interpolated = interpolate({ user: 'Joe' });
  // Hello Joe!
</script>

Usage

import interpolatable from 'interpolatable';

const interpolate = interpolatable({
  weather: {
    params: {
      query: '{{city}}',
      appId: '{{apiKey}}',
      units: '{{units}}',
    },
    path: 'main.temp',
    is: {
      type: 'number',
      minimum: '{{hotTemp}}',
    },
  },
});

const result = interpolate({
  city: 'Halifax',
  apiKey: 'XXX',
  units: 'metric',
  hotTemp: 20,
});

/*
{
  weather: {
    params: {
      query: 'Halifax',
      appId: 'XXX',
      units: 'metric',
    },
    path: 'main.temp',
    is: {
      type: 'number',
      minimum: 20,
    },
  },
}
*/

What in the heck is this good for?

Two things:

1. Interpolating complex objects
2. Doing 1 fast ⚡ (while maintaining referential integrity)

Referential Integrity

The "dependencies" of some nested structure to be interpolated are, in the below descriptor, defined by strings like: {{city}}

const descriptor = {
  weather: {
    params: {
      query: '{{city}}',
      appId: '{{apiKey}}',
      units: '{{units}}',
    },
    path: 'main.temp',
    is: {
      type: 'number',
      minimum: '{{hotTemp}}',
    },
  },
};

Rather than parse the entire structure every time it needs to be interpolated, which is expensive, we check at each node to see if the dependencies of that node (if there are any) have changed since the last run. If they haven't, then we return the last object and we can skip the expensive parsing operation.

The dependencies of the root node are: city, apiKey, units, and hotTemp. But if only hotTemp changes between interpolations, we don't need to re-evaluate weather.params because it's dependencies - city, apiKey, and units haven't changed. So:

const interpolate = interpolatable(descriptor);

const first = interpolate({
  city: 'Halifax',
  apiKey: 'XXX',
  units: 'metric',
  minimum: 20,
});

const second = interpolate({
  city: 'Halifax',
  apiKey: 'XXX',
  units: 'metric',
  minimum: 25,
});

console.log(first === second); // false
console.log(first.weather.params === second.weather.params); // same object! dependencies didn't change between runs

API

function interpolatable<T = string | Record<string, unknown> | unknown[]>(
  subject: T,
  options?: Options<R>,
): <R>(context: R) => T;

type Options<R> = {
  pattern?: RegExp | null;
  resolver?: Resolver<R>;
  skip?: RegExp;
};

type Resolver<R = unknown> = (context: R, subject: string) => unknown;

Pass a subject (any interpolatable string, object, or array) to the default export, and optionally options and it returns an interpolation function which accepts a data source to interpolate from.

Options

pattern: RegExp = /\{\{\s*(.+?)\s*\}\}/g

The default interpolation pattern is a RegExp that matches a string between {{ }} - some_string in {{some_string}}. You can pass in a custom pattern if you like:

const interpolate = interpolatable(
  {
    foo: '<%= bar %> qux',
  },
  {
    pattern: /<%=\s*(.+?)\s*%>/g,
  },
);

const result = interpolate({ bar: 'baz' });
/*
 { foo: 'baz qux' }
*/

Note: pattern can also be null. If pattern is passed as null, interpolatable will return a function that always returns your unaltered subject.

resolver: (context: R, subject: string) => unknown

A resolver is a function that accepts a context and interpolated string and synchronously returns any value, it doesn't have to be a primitive.

The default resolver returns the value from the context indexed by the string:

const DEFAULT_RESOLVER = (c, k) => c[k];

Other good resolvers are lodash's get or property-expr, or jsonpointer.

import expr from 'property-expr';

const interpolate = interpolatable(
  {
    foo: '{{bar.baz}}',
  },
  {
    resolver: (context, subject) => expr.getter(subject)(context),
  },
);

const result = interpolate({
  bar: {
    baz: 'qux',
  },
});

/*
 { foo: 'qux' }
*/

skip: RegExp

Sometimes we want to interpolate a very large deeply nested object. Traversing the entire object is often unnecessary and can be very expensive. This is where skip comes in. When skip is defined, all paths, while traversing the subject, will be tested against it. If the path matches the skip RegExp, anything beneath it will not be traversed.

const interpolate = interpolatable(
  {
    foo: '{{someString}}',
    bar: {
      some: {
        deeply: {
          nested: {
            expensive_to_traverse: {
              object: []
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
  },
  {
    skip: /bar/
  }
)

delimiter: string = '.'

The delimiter is the thing that joins path segments and defaults to a .. Useful to configure if your skip RegExp is restrictive.

import { get } from 'json-pointer';

const interpolate = interpolatable(
  {
    foo: '{{/bar/baz}}',
  },
  {
    resolver: get,
  },
);

const result = interpolate({
  bar: {
    baz: 'qux',
  },
});

/*
 { foo: 'qux' }
*/

Other Cool Stuff

Check out json-schema-rules-engine or json-modifiable for a more practical application.

License

MIT

Contributing

PRs welcome!