Brief

Abstracted measurements for JS/TS, providing Distance, Angle, time Period, Weight, DataSize, Frequency and an easy way to create your own fully hinted measurement types.

Description

Worry no more about keeping track of what unit a property or parameter expects. An angle is an angle, a weight is a weight.

function setRotation(angle: Angle) {
    element.style.transform = `rotate(${angle.asRadians}rad)`;
}

setRotation(Angle.degrees(90));
setRotation(Angle.turns(.25));

Interface

As the API is identical between measurement types, this section will use Measurement to refer to any measurement type.

Creating

Measurements can be created by calling their respective constructor, with or without new, passing in a breakdown of units.

const tenMetres = new Distance({metres: 10});
const eiffelTowerHeight = Distance({feet: 1024});
const djt = Distance({inches: 2.8});

Alternatively, we can call Measurement.<unit>(n):

const antennaHeight = Distance.feet(59);

Arithmetic

We can add, subtract, multiply, divide, modulo and blend Measurements:

// Measurement.total(measurements)
const totalHeight = Distance.total([eiffelTowerHeight, antennaHeight]);

const totalHeight = eiffelTowerHeight.add(antennaHeight);
const halfHeight = totalHeight.divide(2);
const twentyMetres = tenMetres.multiply(2);

// blend() takes a second Measurement and creates an in-between with a given bias:
const blended = tenMetres.blend(twentyMetres, .5); // 15m
const blended = tenMetres.blend(twentyMetres, .75); // 17.5m

// Unit breakdowns may be used in place of measurement arguments:
const totalHeight = Distance.total([eiffelTowerHeight, {feet: 59}]);
const totalHeight = eiffelTowerHeight.add({feet: 59});

// measurement.absolute
const difference = altitude.subtract(totalHeight).absolute;

Comparison

Measurements can be compared using equals, greaterThan, greaterThanOrEqual, lessThan and lessThanOrEqual.

if (altitude.greaterThan({feet: 30})) console.warn("Don't leave without a parachute!");

if (altitude.lessThanOrEqual(totalHeight)) console.warn("Look out for landmarks!");

if (!bagWeight.equals(Weight.total(items.map(i => i.weight)))) {
    speak("Unexpected item in the bagging area!");
}

Reading

At points where you do need a specific unit, it can be read with measurement.as<Unit> or measurement.toUnit(unit):

const heightInFeet = totalHeight.asFeet;
const radians = angle.asRadians;
const heightInMetres = totalHeight.toUnit("metres");

Measurements serialise to JSON as objects that are meaningful to humans, by automatically selecting the best (shortest represented) unit, and can be passed back into their respective constructor.

JSON.stringify(Distance.millimetres(1230)); // { "centimetres": 123 }

Measurements can be formatted for display with measurement.formatNearest():

console.log(totalHeight.formatNearest()); // "330.1 metres"

The unit will be automatically selected to produce the closest number to a type-specific target (usually around 500). Both this target and units to consider can be overridden:

totalHeight.formatNearest(100, ["feet", "inches"]);

Measurements can be broken down into object representations with mixed units via measurement.breakdown():

console.log(Distance.metres(2.5).breakdown()); // Partial<{[unit in FormatUnits]: number}> { metres: 2, centimetres: 50 }

We can pass a list of units to breakdown() to produce a known structure {[unit in SpecifiedUnits]: number}.

Custom measurement types

To work with custom measurement types, just pass createMeasurement() a conversion table:

export const GameDistance = createMeasurement({
    mapUnits: 1,
    metres: 1/64,
    playerSteps: 1/24,
});

// use MeasurementType<typeof X> to type-ify it
export type GameDistance = MeasurementType<typeof GameDistance>;

This gives us a GameDistance class with all of Mezr's functionality:

console.log(GameDistance.playerSteps(1).multiply(2).asMapUnits) // 48

We can pass a second argument to createMeasurement() to specify some options for the type.

referenceUnit selects which unit to store values in behind the scenes. This can maximise precision for unit groups.
format is an object that defines formatting options for your measurement type
format.suffices is a table of {[unit in U]: string | [string, string]}, specifying how formatNearest() will suffix units. The array specifies [singular, plural].
format.defaultTarget specifies the default numeric target for formatNearest() for your measurement type
format.units specifies which units should be considered for JSON encoding and by formatNearest() by default.