Strong and addictive dependency injection for JavaScript
Heroin decouples functions and methods from their arguments, making dynamic substitution a breeze.
function add(a, b) { return a + b; }
var values = {
a: 10,
b: 22
};
var adder = heroin(add, values);
adder(); // 32When injecting into a function, returns a new proxy function that can be called.
The heroin(add, values) figures out that function add requires two arguments:
a and b and looks them up in the passed values object.
You can keep changing the values (dependencies) in the dependency object, calling the proxy function without any additional work. Same code as above, continued
...
adder(); // 32
values.a = 100;
values.b = 2;
adder(); // 102Heroin is better when injecting into a method, because you do not need to keep separate proxy function - it replaces the original method.
var foo = {
getName: function (name) {
return name;
}
};
var dependencies = {
name: 'foo'
};
heroin(foo, 'getName', dependencies);
foo.getName(); // 'foo'If the provided dependency object does not have own property for some argument name, it remains a free argument to the returned function. For example
function add(a, b, c) { return a + b + c; }
var values = {
a: 10,
c: 100
};
var adder = heroin(add, values);
// adder = function(a = 10, b, c = 100) ...
adder(4); // 114This is useful if you plan to inject some common environment variables into the function, while leaving the rest call-specific:
QUnit.module('add', {
setup: function () {
this.log = function (value) { console.log(value); }
}
})l
QUnit.test(function (log, assert) {
// log is injected by module setup,
// assert is an argument from QUnit framework
});Read more about partial dependency injection in my blog post Partial Dependency Injection
I have removed the runtime dependency injection, instead allowing partial dependency injection. For historical purposes, here is what 2 injection points had:
Heroin can inject dependencies during the proxy creation (when you call `heroin` on a function),
and during the function execution (when you call the proxy function)
function add(a, b) { return a + b; }
var values = {
a: 10,
b: 22
};
var adder = heroin(add, values);
var runtimeValues = {
b: 500
};
adder(runtimeValues); // 510
Let's inject name and message, while leaving log a free argument
getName: function (log, name, message) {
log(name + ': ' + message);
}
var dependencies = {
name: 'foo',
message: 'hello'
};
heroin(foo, 'getName', dependencies);
foo.getName(console.log); // prints 'foo hello'Or we could list arguments in different order, the result is the same
getName: function (name, message, log) {
I was inspired by the simplicity of the reflection in JavaScript shown by @iammerrick in JavaScript Dependency Injection. Still I felt there was too much extra code to be useful: both Merrick's and AngularJs dependency injection requires an external executor function to actually call the function.
Heroin removes the external controller, instead directing parameters from dependency object into the appropriate named arguments. Simple.
Currently heroin is not minification safe
One thing that always bothered me about using QUnit is the inability to have module specific state without a separate closure where all variables are accessible to every unit test
(function () {
var a = 10, b = 20;
QUnit.module('example');
QUnit.test(function () {
// use a and b
});
}());I always wanted to have the ability to store test data in the module config and be able to explicitly inject into each unit test only the data it needs:
QUnit.module('example', {
a: 10,
b: 20
});
QUnit.test(function (a, b, assert) {
assert(a === 10, 'qunit test has first argument "a"');
assert(b === 20, 'qunit test has second argument "b"');
});Let me show how easy it is to achieve the second goal using heroin. First, let's see the minimal QUnit runtime implementation that can collect and execute unit tests without any injection
// test collection
var modules = [];
var QUnit = {
module: function (name, config) {
modules.push({
config: config,
tests: []
});
},
test: function (fn) {
var m = modules[modules.length - 1];
m.tests.push(fn); // 1
}
};
// test execution
function runQunit() {
modules.forEach(function (m) {
m.tests.forEach(function (t) {
t(console.assert);
});
});
}All we do is collecting test functions and then running them in runQunit.
Now let's add dynamic dependency injection. This requires single line change
in line // 1
m.tests.push(heroin(fn, m.config));By doing this we are injecting module config object into each unit tests
during the collection, making unit tests like QUnit.test(function (a, b) { ...
possible.
I implemented a qunit plugin qunit-inject to make production grade dependency injection for this wonderful testing framework.
Author: Gleb Bahmutov © 2014
License: MIT - do anything with the code, but don't blame me if it does not work.
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Support: if you find any problems with this module, email / tweet / open issue on Github
Copyright (c) 2014 Gleb Bahmutov
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