Aspiration

A restricted way to do aspect oriented programming.

Rationale

Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) has proven to be an effective way keep cross-cutting concerns (such as logging and validation) from cluttering a code base. However, it has also drawn justified criticism for making code less transparent about what it is actually doing. Since the need for aspect oriented programming arose in my own code bases, I tried to come up with a more restricted type of AOP that is easier to reason about and nonetheless offers some of the same advantages as full-blown AOP. The main idea is that instead of extending a function F with pointcuts (as we do in AOP), we can extend it with callback functions. We then implement these callback functions in a single place. When a client calls F, then the callbacks are executed (so that things such as logging and validation are performed). In order to understand what F really does, we only need to look at F's body, and at the single place where F's callbacks are implemented.

Debugging

With Aspiration you can wrap your functions so that they can receive a callbacks object. To avoid stepping into the wrapper function, add /aspiration/ to the ignore list of your debugger.

A quick note on the history of this library

This library used to be more complex. I realized I could achieve the same goals in a simpler way. Fortunately, very likely, no one except for myself ever used the old version.

The withCbs wrapper function

Assume that we have a class (that I shall call the container) with a function (let's call it the host function) that we wish to extend using AOP. In the example below, the host function is Selection.selectItem. Currently, it does not yet take any callbacks:

export type SelectionParamsT = {
  itemId: any;
  isShift?: boolean;
  isCtrl?: boolean;
};

class Selection {
  selectableIds?: Array<string>;
  ids: Array<string> = [];

  selectItem(args: { selectionParams: SelectionParamsT }) {
    // Todo: validate selectionParams. We will use a callback function for this:
    // cbs.validate(this.selectableIds)

    this.ids = handleSelectItem(this.selectableIds, args.selectionParams);
  }
}

Our goal is to install a callbacks object that has a validate function, and use this function inside selectItem. We will do this in three steps:

• First, we will add a callback-map in container class.
• Then, we'll update the host function so that it uses the callback-map.
• Finally, we'll implement the callbacks in the client code.

For the first two steps, we'll make the following changes:

import { withCbs, type CallbackMap } from 'aspiration';

class Selection {
  // The CallbackMap type adds the enter() and exit() callbacks that
  // will be discussed later.
  callbackMap = {} as CallbackMap<{
    selectItem: {
      validate: (selectableIds: string[]) => void;
    };
  }>;

  // ...

  selectItem(args: { selectionParams: SelectionParamsT }) {
    return withCbs(this.callbackMap, 'selectItem', args, (cbs) => {
      cbs.validate(this.selectableIds);
      // ...
    });
  }
}

As you can see, the approach is very simple. The container instance has a callbackMap object with callback functions that can be used in any of the member functions. The host function uses the callbackMap by passing it to withCbs. Then, withCbs does the following:

• it constructs a callbacks-object (cbs) that is a copy of this.callbackMap['selectItem];
• it calls cbs.enter() (if this function exists);t
• it executes the body of the host function (the last argument of withCbs), passing in the callbacks-object. It stores the return value;
• it calls cbs.exit() (if this function exists);
• it returns the return value.

The callbacks-object contains a copy of the host function arguments, so that each callback has access to these arguments via this.args (we shall see this in action later).

Now all that remains to be done is to install the callback functions.

import { type Cbs } from 'aspiration';

const selection = new Selection();

selection.callbackMap = {
  selectItem: {
    validate(this: Cbs<Selection['selectItem']>, selectableIds: string[]) {
      if (!selectableIds.contains(this.args.selectionParams.itemId)) {
        throw Error(`Invalid id: ${this.args.selectionParams.itemId}`);
      }
    },
    // Log selectionParams when selectItem() is entered
    enter(this: Cbs<Selection['selectItem']>) {
      console.log(this.args.selectionParams);
    },
    // do something when selectItem() is exited
    exit() {},
  },
};

The Cbs<Selection['selectItem']> type contains the definition of the callbacks-object of the selectItem host function, including the enter() and exit() callbacks, and including the this.args object with the arguments of the host function. In the implementation of the enter callback, we see an example of using this.args.

Type safety

In general, this approach is type-safe. However, the programmer has to make sure that the correct type is used in the definition of this in the callback implementation (e.g. Cbs<Selection['selectItem']>).

Default callbacks

The current version of the Selection class forces the client to do some work: it needs to implement the validate callback using setCallbackMap. It would be nice to support a default implementation that works out of the box. This can be done by merging with a default callbackMap:

import { mergeDeepLeft, withCbs, type CallbackMap } from 'aspiration';

const defaultCallbackMap = (selection: Selection) => ({
  selectItem: {
    validate: (this: Cbs<Selection['selectItem']>) {
      handleValidation(selection, this.args.selectionParams);
    }
  }
});

class Selection {
  callbackMap_ = {} as CallbackMap<{
    // The selectItem callbacks are now optional
    selectItem?: {
      // If you choose to implement the selectItem callbacks, then validate is optional
      validate?: (selectableIds: string[]) => void;
    }
  }>;

  get callbackMap() {
    return this.callbackMap_;
  }

  set callbackMap(cbs: typeof this.callbackMap_) {
    this.callbackMap_ = mergeDeepLeft(cbs, defaultCallbackMap(this));
  }

  // ...
}

In this case the selection instance will work even when the client doesn't implement the callback-map.

Be careful with your Promises

If you want to access the callbacks-object in the then-clause of a Promise, then you need to create a local copy of the values you are interested in. It's not possible to access this inside the then-clause. In the example below, we see that this.args.selectionParams is cached.

setCallbackMap(selection, {
  selectItem: {
    validate(this: SelectionCbs['selectItem'], selectableIds: string[]) {
      const params = this.args.selectionParams;
      Promise.resolve().then(() => console.log(params));
    },
  },
} as SelectionCbs);

Conclusion

Aspiration offers a light-weight and effective approach for extending functions with callbacks. It's used in much the same way as other functions that take callbacks, but there are some differences. First of all, the callbacks are installed in a single place, before the host functions are called. Secondly, each callback function automatically gets access to the arguments of the host function, which tends to reduce clutter in the code. To predict the results of the host function, it's sufficient to inspect its definition, as well as the location where the callbacks are implemented. This combination of features makes it possible to do Aspect Oriented Programming in an agile and predictable manner.