spigg.js

spigg.js brings the Data mapper pattern to node.js, giving you database- agnostic mappers for data persistence and entities for business logic, to ensure DRY principles and testability across your application.

spigg.js is lightweight by design and only ships with a handful of methods to get, set, unset and clear your data and thereby leaves everything else up to you.

Read about the data mapper pattern here.

Installation

npm install spigg

Usecase

You have an application that lets users signup. For each signup, you need to apply app-specific validation rules to the user-submitted data to create a user that you can persist to the database of your choice.

Mashing this together in one block is great for rapid prototyping, but problems quickly arise when you need to unit test your code, or work with users as a resource from elsewhere in your application. If you haven't thought about separation of concerns, you quickly end up doing integration testing instead of actual unit testing and any DRY principles can be forgotten soon.

With spigg you put all your code that persist data into mappers and the actual business logic such as data validation and filtering into entities.

Imagine entities as being unaware of both the origin and destination of data. Entities should focus on creating valid data for your application.

Mappers on the other hand does store your data and rely fully upon said entities to have dealt with validation and filtering of data.

As long as you stick to your mappers for accessing and persisting data across your application, using multiple databases and building cache-layers inside or on top of your models should be simple.

Example

/entities/User.coffee

class User extends s.Entity

Set your own standard values and allowed fields

inside the constructor

init: -> @defaults = country: "Sweden" meta: created: new Date()

isAdult: -> switch @data.country when "Sweden" return true if @data.age >= 18 when "UK" return true if @data.age >= 16
else return false

isValid: -> return false unless @data.name return false unless @isAdult() return true

module.exports = User

/mappers/User.coffee

class UserMapper extends s.Mapper

save: (doc, fn) -> require("db").collection("users").save doc

module.exports = UserMapper

/app.js

express = require('express') user = require("./entities/User.coffee") userMapper = require("./mappers/User.coffee") app = express()

app.post "/users", (req, res) -> user = new User req.body userMapper.save user if user.isValid() res.send "", 201

app.listen(80)

Documentation: spiggEntity

Use the spiggEntity by extending it as shown below:

s = require("spigg")

# Setup a entity for our user
class User extends s.Entity

  # Create a init method that gets invoked upon construction
  init: ->
    # Set defaults for values
    @defaults:
      country: "Sweden"

    # Specify fields that should ONLY be allowed in this
    # entity. Non-specified fields will not appear in the
    # entity. Note that without the "fields"-property shown
    # below, all fields are allowed.
    @fields =
  	  name:    true
  	  age:     true
  	  country: true
    
  # Create a custom setter that appends followers
  # to the followers propery assuming it being an
  # array  
  _setFollowers: (str, obj) ->
    obj.followers = obj.followers ? []
    obj.followers.push str
    false
    

    
# Create user by passing arguments to the constructor 
#  - Note that user will also contain inherited 
#    default values from above
u = new user(name: "John Doe") # => {country: "Sweden", name: "John Doe"}

# Create user without any inherited default
# properties. Useful for updating already stored data.
u = new user(name: "John Doe", true) # => {name: "John Doe"}

# Set name by calling the set method
u.set("name", "Jane Doe")

# Get property from entity by name
u.get("name") # => "Jane Doe"

# Get all properties from entity
u.get() # => {country: "Sweden", name: "John Doe"}

# Unset a property
u.unset("country")
u.get() # => {name: "John Doe"}

# Get nested properties with dot notation
u.get("meta.created") # => Sun Oct 14 2012 18:55:52 GMT+0000 (UTC)

# Set nested properties with dot notation
u.set("meta.votes", 12000)

# Reset the user back to default values
#  - Note that name is missing now
u.reset()
u.get() # => {country: "Sweden"}

# Empties *ALL* properties from the entity
u.clear()
u.get() # => {}

# Get the JSON representation of our object
# - Note: toString() & toJSON() does the same thing
u.toJSON() => {"country":"Sweden", name: "John Doe"}

# Modify the properties of our entity with a closure
# - Note: The modifier object will be passed the complete
#   current properties and should return it after modification
#   to perform modification of values.
u.toModifier((obj) ->
  # Modify object here before returing it
  return obj
)

# Create a custom setter that is automatically called whenever
# the **email** property is updated. This setter *MUST* return the
# value to be used for the property.
#
# The actual data object is also passed as a reference, to allow direct 
# modification of the data object for full freedom.  
#
#  - Note the underscore (_) in beginning of the setter function's
# name and that first character must of property name must be
# capitalized for the auto setter to work.
#
_setEmail: (str, obj, callback) ->
  # Always store emails in lowercase
  str = String(str).toLowerCase()
  
  # Add a md5 version of our email to our data object
  # to allow getting the users gravatar.
  obj.email_md5 = crypto.createHash('md5').update(str).digest("hex")
   
  return str

Documentation: spiggMapper

spiggMapper is a blank slate containing only the the isEntity-method, which is used to ensure that data that is passed into the mapper origins from a class that extends spiggEntity. Use the isEntity-method as shown below:

class userMapper extends s.Mapper
  save: (user) ->
  	db.save user if @isEntity user

Roadmap

• Support for revisions

License

See LICENSE file.

Copyright (c) 2012 Joakim B