DDevelopment & Design

Not so easy functional programming in JavaScript

Introduction

JavaScript allows for operating on arrays in a functional way, e.g. using filter or map functions. As an argument for these functions we can pass lambda expression or function reference. Is there a difference between them? The answer is yes.

What’s the problem?

In our project we are building a mapping using String.fromCharCode function. To simplify the usage of this function looked similar to:

[66, 67, 68].map(v => String.fromCharCode(v))

When we run this code with node we received [ 'B', 'C', 'D' ], but when we decided to refactor it to use function reference the result was different:

> [66, 67, 68].map(String.fromCharCode)
[ 'B\u0000\u0000', 'C\u0001\u0000', 'D\u0002\u0000' ]

What happened?

To find the reason for this behavior, let’s first play with function String.fromCharCode alone:

> String.fromCharCode(66)
'B'
> String.fromCharCode([66, 67, 68])
'\u0000'
> String.fromCharCode(66, 67, 68)
'BCD'

String.fromCharCode deals with various types and numbers of arguments.

Now, let’s examine the function map:

> [66, 67, 68].map(v => v)
[ 66, 67, 68 ]
> [66, 67, 68].map((v, u) => [v, u])
[ [ 66, 0 ], [ 67, 1 ], [ 68, 2 ] ]
> [66, 67, 68].map((v, u, w) => [v, u, w])
[ [ 66, 0, [ 66, 67, 68 ] ],
  [ 67, 1, [ 66, 67, 68 ] ],
  [ 68, 2, [ 66, 67, 68 ] ] ]

map, like many other array functions, passes always three arguments to function. First is the current value, the second is the index of the current value and third is the whole array.

It means that passing String.fromCharCode to map function under the hood looks like this:

> [66, 67, 68].map((v, u, w) => String.fromCharCode(v, u, w))
[ 'B\u0000\u0000', 'C\u0001\u0000', 'D\u0002\u0000' ]

and it is equal to the initial example.

Conclusion

We must be careful when we want to use a function that can take more than one argument, but we want to pass only the value. We have to pass the function as a lambda expression:

> [66, 67, 68].map(v => String.fromCharCode(v))
[ 'B', 'C', 'D' ]

or create another function which ensures that only the first argument will be passed to desired function:

> const useOnlyValue = f => v => f(v);
undefined
> [66, 67, 68].map(useOnlyValue(String.fromCharCode))
[ 'B', 'C', 'D' ]

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DDevelopment & Design

Simple trick to DRY your Grails controller

Grails controllers are not very DRY. It's easy to find duplicated code fragments in default generated controller. Take a look at code sample below. It is duplicated four times in show, edit, update and delete actions:

class BookController {
def show() {
def bookInstance = Book.get(params.id)
if (!bookInstance) {
flash.message = message(code: 'default.not.found.message', args: [message(code: 'book.label', default: 'Book'), params.id])
redirect(action: "list")
return
        }
        [bookInstance: bookInstance]
    }
}

Why is it duplicated?

There is a reason for that duplication, though. If you move this snippet to a method, it can redirect to "list" action, but it can't prevent controller from further execution. After you call redirect, response status changes to 302, but after method exits, controller still runs subsequent code.

Solution

At TouK we've implemented a simple trick to resolve that situation:

  1. wrap everything with a simple withStoppingOnRender method,
  2. whenever you want to render or redirect AND stop controller execution - throw EndRenderingException.

We call it Big Return - return from a method and return from a controller at once. Here is how it works:

class BookController {
def show(Long id) {
withStoppingOnRender {
Book bookInstance = Book.get(id)
validateInstanceExists(bookInstance)
            [bookInstance: bookInstance]
        }
    }

protected Object withStoppingOnRender(Closure closure) {
try {
return closure.call()
        } catch (EndRenderingException e) {}
    }

private void validateInstanceExists(Book instance) {
if (!instance) {
flash.message = message(code: 'default.not.found.message', args: [message(code: 'book.label', default: 'Book'), params.id])
redirect(action: "list")
throw new EndRenderingException()
        }
    }
}

class EndRenderingException extends RuntimeException {}

Example usage

For simple CRUD controllers, you can use this solution and create some BaseController class for your controllers. We use withStoppingOnRender in every controller so code doesn't look like a spaghetti, we follow DRY principle and code is self-documented. Win-win-win! Here is a more complex example:

class DealerController {
@Transactional
def update() {
withStoppingOnRender {
Dealer dealerInstance = Dealer.get(params.id)
validateInstanceExists(dealerInstance)
validateAccountInExternalService(dealerInstance)
checkIfInstanceWasConcurrentlyModified(dealerInstance, params.version)
            dealerInstance.properties = params
saveUpdatedInstance(dealerInstance)
redirectToAfterUpdate(dealerInstance)
        }
    }
}