FJS: Functional Utils For Javascript

Functional Utilties for Javascript.

Reasons

See this talk for motivation and some good examples. http://www.slideshare.net/drboolean/pointfree-functional-programming-in-javascript Code Samples

There are two main concepts this library uses. Currying (or partial application), and Point-free code, or higher-order programming

Point-Free / Higher-order functions

We can do some powerful stuff by writing functions that create other functions.

TODO: add example

To define a function, we don't always have to actually make a function. Instead, we can rename an existing function. For example:

TODO: add example

Currying / Partial Application

Compose

TODO: add example

API

Curry

Allows you to easily curry functions. This means that if you call the curried version of a function with fewer arguments that it requires, it returns a function to call with the remaining arguments. The function short-circuits if you call it with the correct number of arguments, meaning that it doesn't affect performance unless it has to.

See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying

The syntax looks best in coffeescript, because you can just prefix a function definition with curry.

curry = require('fjs').curry

# just wrap your function in curry() and it will do the rest
add = curry (a, b) -> a + b
add2 = add(2)

assert.equal add(2,3), 5
assert.equal add2(3), 5
assert.equal add(2)(3), 5

assert.deepEqual [1,2,3].map(add(2)), [3,4,5]

You can also use curry on a whole module, making it easy to work with functions that haven't been declared as curried. It curry any module functions it finds. Since curry doesn't have any effect when the function is called with all arguments, it doens't hurt anything to do this.

math = curry require('math')
add2 = math.add(2)

Simple Stuff

We need some simple functions so we can call object actions as functions instead of doing it with a "."

// get
getName = get 'name'
getName(obj) == obj.name

// set
setNameIsBob = set 'name', 'bob'
setNameIsBob(obj)
obj.name = 'bob'

// call
getName = call 'getName'
getName(obj) == obj.getName()

TODO: add example of application on set/call
TODO: basics (eq, etc), and why. Example of why it's useful

Underscore Functions

Underscore.js is awesome, but it puts the data first. For example, underscore.map is of type: (list, iterator) ->. This makes it nearly impossible to do point-free javascript. They're also not curried. For this reason, the following functions are taken from underscore, but they have their data last

Their types are all the same:

find(iterator, list)

• find
• map
• filter
• reducep
• each
• min
• max

You can curry these, for example:

add2 = (n) -> n + 2
add2ToEverything = map add2
add2ToEverything [1,2,3]

We also export the following as-is for convenience

• head/first
• last
• tail/rest
• compose