Uber

Uber is a function overloading tool for Node.js.

Installation

Install Uber with npm by running

npm install uber.js

Basic Usage

First of all, you need to require Uber:

var uber = require('uber.js');

Now you just have to replace your long function implementations with lots of arguments validations with Uber calls, so your code that looks like this:

var addToArray = function (array, value, index) {
    if (!(array instanceof array)) {
        throw new Error('Must provide a valid array');
    }
    if (typeof index === 'number' && isFinite(index)) {
        array[index] === value;
    } else {
        array.push(value);
    }
};

Turns into this:

var addToArray = uber([
    ['array', '*', 'int', function (array, value, index) {
        array[index] = value;
    }],
    ['array', '*', function (array, value) {
        array.push(value);
    }]
]);

Or this:

var addToArray = uber({
    'array,*,int': function (array, value, index) {
        array[index] = value;
    },
    'array,*': function (array, value) {
        array.push(value);
    }
});

And then Uber does the magic for you:

var myArray = [];
addToArray(myArray, 'node.js');
addToArray(myArray, 'ie');
addToArray(myArray, 'chrome', 1);

Class instances types

You can also tell Uber to match arguments by their prototype:

var User = function (name) {
    this.name = name;
};

var logUser = uber([
    [User.prototype, function (user) {
        console.log(user.name);
    }],
    ['string', function (name) {
        console.log(name);
    }],
    ['null', function (user) {
        console.error('You provided a null user');
    }]
]);

logUser(new User('Ryan Dahl'));
logUser('John Resig');
logUser(null);

Custom argument types

You can define your own type definitions by simply passing a function instead of a string in your implementation:

var repeatTimes = uber([
    [function (arg, index, args) {
        return typeof arg === 'number' && isFinite(arg) && arg >= 0;
    }, 'function', function (times, fn) {
        for (var i = 0; i < times; i++) {
            fn(i);
        }
    }]
]);
repeatTimes(10, function (i) {
    console.log((10 - i) + '...');
});

Uber will call your function with 3 arguments:

• arg: The current argument
• index: The current argument's index
• args: The actual array of arguments

And your function must either return a boolean or a positive integer, which represents the number of arguments it matches.

If you want to create reusable type definitions you can register them using uber.registerType:

uber.registerType('pos_int', function (arg, index, args) {
    return typeof arg === 'number' && isFinite(arg) && arg >= 0;
});

var repeatTimes = uber([
    ['pos_int', 'function', function (times, fn) {
        for (var i = 0; i < times; i++) {
            fn(i);
        }
    }]
]);
repeatTimes(10, function (i) {
    console.log((10 - i) + '...');
});

Custom error handling

Notice that if Uber can't find a suitable implementation for the given arguments, it will throw an error:

var dummy = uber([
    ['bool', function (bool) {
        return bool;
    }]
]);

dummy(1, 2, 3); // Will throw 'Could not resolve function with given arguments'

If you want to handle these errors in your own way, you can add a function to the last index of your implementations array and it will get all the actual arguments:

var dummy = uber([
    ['bool', function (bool) {
        return bool;
    }],
    function () {
        console.error('Oops! I don\'t know what to do with these', arguments);
    }
]);

dummy(1, 2, 3); // Logs an error message

Class instance methods

Let's say you have a Person class:

var Person = function (name) {
    this.name = name;
};

And you want to add a new method to its prototype. Do this:

Person.prototype.walk = uber([
    ['real', function (distance) {
        return this.name + ' is walking ' + distance + ' meters';
    }]
]);

What if you want to add it to an instance? Then Uber lets you tell what's the function's context:

var walter = new Person('Walter White');
walter.sayMyName = uber(['string', function (aka) {
    if (this.name === 'Walter White' && aka === 'Heisenberg') {
        return 'You\'re god damn right!';
    }
}], walter);

See? It's the second argument (walter). This way your implementation will be .apply'ed with walter:

walter.sayMyName('Heisenberg');
walter.walk(10);

Map vs Array of implementations

As seen before, you can also call Uber with a map of implementations instead of an array. Even though it has a cleaner syntax, it lacks some features, since the keys must be strings. That's why you can't define error handler implementations by using maps. You may, however, declare an implementation that takes no arguments:

uber({
    '': function () {
        console.log('I don\'t have any arguments');
    }
});

Also notice that Uber splits those keys and commas (,) are delimiters and they are not .trim'med, so all whitespaces are kept. Thus, 'bool, int' is NOT the same as 'bool,int' since they are respectively parsed into ['bool', 'int'] and ['bool', ' int'].

uber.def

You can also can uber.def instead of uber. This way you should pass each argument as a function signature, which means that this code:

uber([
    ['int', function (n) {}],
    ['string', function (str) {}]
]);

Is the same as this one:

uber.def(['int', function (n) {}],
         ['string', function (str) {}]);

Note: This method does not support the context argument.

List of supported argument types

Type	Matches	Number of matches

•     | Anything             | `1`
  

... | Anything | Everything starting from the current argument until the end null | null | 1 undefined | undefined | 1 bool | Booleans | 1 int | Integers | 1 real | Real | 1 number | JavaScript numbers | 1 string | Strings | 1 array | Arrays | 1 plain | Plain objects ({}) | 1 date | Date instances | 1 regex | Regexes | 1 function | Functions | 1

License

Please refer to file LICENSE.