Backlash

The idea behind Backlash is to bring reactive literals into your web apps. Imagine strings, numbers, and such literals being able to cascade-update their values everywhere across the app.

It works in Node.js and in the browser.

The idea

The idea behind this simple module is to have literals / variables that update themselves where they are being used.

Install

npm install backlash

Usage

Initializing Backlash

var Backlash = require('backlash')();
var B = Backlash.creator;

Preparing Variables

/**
 * Initialze the variables
 */
var firstName   = B("firstName"),
  lastName  = B("lastName"),
  fullName  = B("fullName"),
  age     = B("age"),
  description = B("description");

Setting & Modifying Variables

/**
 * Set values
 */
firstName("John");
lastName("Doe");
age(27);

Using as Variables

/**
 * Below code works as normal because
 * concatenation will automatically 
 * call firstName.toString()
 */
console.log('Hello, I am ' + firstName);

Creating Dependent Variables

/**
 * Create dependent values
 */
var fullName = B("fullName", "{{firstName}} {{lastName}}");
console.log(fullName()); //John Doe

Deleting Variables from Backlash Memory

/**
 * Delete variables to free the memory, otherwise backlash holds them forever
 */
firstName.trash();

Using after Trashing

/**
 * Using the variable again should throw an error, we will catch it
 */
try {
  firstName('Janis');
} catch(e) {
  console.log(e); //[Error: ERROR 101: variable used after being trashed]
}

/**
 * Let's check if a variable is trashed already
 */
if (!firstName.trashed()) {
  firstName('Janis');
  console.log('Modified firstName');
} else {
  console.log('Cannot use firstName anymore');
}

Todo

This is a very basic implementation. Other features to do when I have some free time:

1. UI binding: Update of backlash variable to cause UI bound elements to update (via DOM attributes)
2. AngularJS Module: Extend AngularJS with Backlash functionality

Contributing

Backlash is created by @ritenv. Contributions are open and welcome. For any issues, please raise it in the issues section and feel free to send pull requests to fix them.