FRP, angular and global event handlers - javascript

I just started using Bacon.js and it's truly awesome. Although sometimes I do struggle to find the right way of doing things. For example I want to have an angular directive with a draggable part. I shamelessly pick into someone's jsBin and tried to adapt that code for angular
I am trying to make a table with resizable columns. So if I do something like this
in column-header directive
link: (scope, element, attrs)->
el = element.find('.column-separator')
doc = $(document)
mMove = doc.asEventStream('mousemove')
startDrag = el.asEventStream('mousedown')
endDrag = doc.asEventStream('mouseup').takeWhile mMove
# in this case unlike the example in jsBin I don't care about vertical axis,
# only horizontal "X"
getDelta = (t)-> a = t[1]; b = t[0]; return a-b
add = (p1,p2)-> p1 + p2
draggingDeltas = startDrag.flatMap ->
return mMove
.map '.clientX'
.slidingWindow 2,2
.map getDelta
.takeUntil endDrag
pos = draggingDeltas.scan 0, add
pos.onValue (pos)-> el.css left: pos+"px"
This kinda works, but now this directive will register 'mousemove' and 'mouseup' events all over the page. I probably can add some takeWhile statements, and the matter of fact I just tried and it didn't really work.
I mean what's the pattern of using global event handler's like $(document).asEventStream('click') in angular app?
You can create handlers in a directive and then use takeWhile, takeUntil but then that will work only once, since the stream eventually stops. Do you have to re-initialize the stream every time you need to respond to a document.click?
Also isn't it a bad thing to have "document" level events in bunch of places? If you write in a directive $(document).asEventStream('mouseup') and use that directive two hundred times, wouldn't that create actual two hundred listeners?
Or you gotta introduce these sort of stream variables globally for entire app to use, and then inside a directive do map, filter and reduce? But then what if someone calls takeUntil and stream stops flowing completely and can't be used in other parts of the app?
Or maybe listen on the top level of the app and emit $rootScope event for every value in the stream and then in a directive or view use ng-bacon's $rootScope.$asEventStream(event)?
Wouldn't that make the app somewhat less responsive? Say if you need to respond on 'keydown' and 'keyup' events?
Can someone show me an example how FRP can be used in angular directives (particularly drag-N-drop sample would be appreciated)

I'm not sure how exactly this fits into the angular philosophy, but I would definitely just add those handlers once.
In a global singleton class:
var mouseHandler = {
up: $(document).asEventStream('mouseup'),
move: $(document).asEventStream('mousemove')
}
The inside a single component, you add handlers to those but make sure you always use takeUntil, that way bacon only handles those events if there is an actual need.
function dragHandler(element) {
var start = $(element).asEventStream('mousedown')
var delta = start.flatMap(function() {
return mouseHandler.move
.map('.clientX')
.slidingWindow(2,2)
.map(getDelta)
.takeUntil(mouseHandler.up)
})
var pos = delta.scan(0, add)
pos.onValue(function(p) {
$(element).css({left: p + "px"})
})
function getDelta(t) { return t[1]-t[0] }
function add(a,b) { return a+b }
}
http://jsbin.com/yekojitake/3/edit

Related

How to test click event using pure javascript and Jest

I'm trying to test a really simple increment function in vanilla javascript.
This function have a button with a click event, which triggers the input to sum one to its value.
I've tried to search for help to think how to resolve this problem. I think maybe I should create a mock for the button (instead of access the DOM element), and simulates the click event with Enzyme (but I don't know if it is really necessary).
All I could get in my searches was Jest testing using components from React or Angular, which complicated much more my question and therefore I get no answer for simple JS. The Jest documentation didn't help either.
The code of my function is:
const increment = () => {
$increment.addEventListener("click", function() {
if (+$quantity.value < 100) {
$quantity.value = +$quantity.value + 1;
}
});
};
The full code is on this codesandbox.
Hokay so, my JavaScript is a little rusty but I think I know the problem looking at the code (thank you by the way, it made this way easier to figure out)...
Your instinct that you need a mock is correct, but right now the way your increment function works it's coupled to $increment which is in the local scope (making it really unfun to mock). Instead of using a private variable in the local scope to bind the event listener to, you want to pass the $element into the increment function, and then to add the event listener to it.
const increment = ($element) => {
$element.addEventListener("click", function() {
if (+$quantity.value < 100) {
$quantity.value = +$quantity.value + 1;
}
});
};
In your test now you can create a mock with a function on it called addEventListener... the below is probably not quite right, but I think should get you most of the way there:
// In your test setup, or in the test itself
const myMockElement = {
addEventListener: jest.fn(),
};
// Later in your test
increment(myMockElement);
expect(myMockElement.addEventListener.mock.calls.length).toBe(1);
Just as a note from the code in the event listener, I'd recommend passing it $quantity into the function as well instead of capturing it from the local context/scope/whatever-the-hell-its-exactly-called-in-javascript (i.e. what we did with $element)... it'll make testing things MUCH, MUCH easier to test and make your functions more robust.
Hope this helps!

Updating global variables with NodeJS

I'm beginner to NodeJS, so I'm not entirely sure what the best method to achieve this would be. Basically I want to create a global variable with a string, for instance 'USD', that would get updated whenever my 'set currency' event is fired. I want it to remain that way until the event is called again.
I am using EventEmitter to fire off some events, in one of my files I have the following.
var event = require('./events');
if (msg.content.includes('!currency set currency')) {
split = msg.content.split(' ');
event.emit('setCurrency', split[3])
}
And then inside the events file I'm doing something like the following.
var exchangePref;
var event = new events.EventEmitter();
event.on('setExchange', (exchange) => {
exchangePref = exchange;
return exchangePref;
});
modules.exports = event;
I understand that re-writing the variable inside a callback isn't going to do what I need it to do, but I'm quite lost with how to achieve what I need it to do due to the modules.exports = event part at the bottom, the calling function simply never gets the data. I've played around with creating a constructor, but even still I couldn't get it to work.
Any suggestions/ideas would be greatly appreciated.
I wouldn't use event emitter for this. Instead create a module along the lines of:
var exchangePrefs = { currency: "JPY" };
module.exports = {
setCurrency : function(newVal){ exchangePrefs.currency = newVal; },
getCurrency : function(){ return exchangePrefs.currency; }
};
Then in your various other modules you just:
require('./mymodule').setCurrency('USD');
and somewhere else
var currency = require('./mymodule').getCurrency();
I'm sure it can be made prettier, but I think you get the point. For almost all intents and purposes modules work like singletons. There are some gotchas, but nothing you'll run into too often. (Singleton pattern in nodejs - is it needed?)
Personally I'd use some sort of data persistence in the exchangePref-module just for peace of mind. Like redis, or saving to a json-file.

Why should we use Observer/Pub-Sub pattern here?

I am trying to learn Observer and publisher-subscriber pattern.
came through this simple example here
Problem: There is a button and onclick of the button it should be updating the count.
without any pattern i can do simply as
window.onload = function() {
var container = document.querySelector('.container');
var count = 0;
container.querySelector('#click').addEventListener('click', function() {
count = +document.querySelector("#count").innerHTML;
count++;
document.querySelector("#count").innerHTML = count;
});
}
<div class="container">
<input type="button" id="click" value="click">Total Counts: <span id="count">0</span>
</div>
In the above link that i have shared about observer pattern it has an implementation for the same using observer pattern jsbin
My Question here, is the usage of a pattern not complicating the code. I am really having a bad time of understanding what exactly the code is trying to solve .can some one please explain this and what is this.notify doing in the jsbin code.
Please help
Thanks
Not an expert in patterns but from what I understand, with simple code like your example that takes in a single event listener, the Observer Pattern would definitely be overkill.
As explained in your link above: "The observer pattern is a simple way to allow communication between elements without having to rely on events, callbacks, or polling. The best thing about the observer pattern is that the thing being observed does not have to worry about what is observing it or how many observers it has." It basically allows you to attach observers easily without having to modify the base element code, because the base code doesn't really have to care about who is watching it. It just has to announce that it's done something (increased a counter property) and it's up to the observers to react accordingly. Because of this, the counter code could stand on it's own and not have any dependencies to run (thus, making it easier to test as well). If you need to make changes to your observers, you won't have to touch the counter code and risk causing any side effects.
In comparison, your example has your callback code and counter heavily tied to one another. If you need to make a change like say, making it have different wording or have the counter value appear under a specific element, you have no choice but to touch that entire block of code. Again though, your code example is simple enough and if that is all it will be doing, then it should be perfectly fine to use.
I think it's easier to understand the concept of the Observer pattern when working with stuff like async code and Promises, where your callbacks/observers become separate from your implementing async code
Firstly, please make sure we are on the same page regarding the terminologies in Observer Pattern (OP): Observer object, Subject (or Observee) object, Subject.addObserver(...) method, and Subject.notify(...) method.
OK, now,
without any pattern i can do simply as
No, you are actually using OP in an implicit form. When you wrote:
container.querySelector('#click')
This will return a reference to the button, I name it button:
var button = container.querySelector('#click');
Then the call button.addEventListener(...) is basically an analogy to Subject.addObserver(...). This means that your button object is actually the Subject in OP. The call Subject.notify(...) is implicitly handled by the JavaScript engine. And your inline function to consume the click event is actually the Observer.
The main difference between your code and the code of jarrettmeyer.com lies in the question: who is the Subject? In jarrettmeyer.com, Subject is not any button but a separated object: the Counter object. This offers some advantages:
The Subject can associate with many buttons, for example, jarrettmeyer can write: $("#anotherButton").on("click", function () { counter.increment(); });
The Subject can easily maintain whatever state and notify whatever info to the Observer. In jarrettmeyer's example, these state/info are simply a count number. Indeed, in your example, no state/info of the button (except the fact that it has just been clicked) is notified since the count number is maintained in your span which belongs to the implementation detail of your Observer and thus not related to OP.
Do you know the code you wrote is also an implementation of the observer pattern? The function you passed after the 'click' argument is an observer and it is added to the observers' array. You can add as many functions as you want against the 'click' event of the same element. They all will be fired by running a loop in the observers' array when the 'click' event happens.
If you have only one action happening as a response to some other action, you can write the action manually without implementing the observer pattern. However, when you want to do multiple things at multiple parts of the codebase in response to some event, observer pattern is the way to go.
Yes, you are right. addEventListener or jQuery .on() could do the similar thing as Observer. They are good enough for most of the front-end usage. But in the following use cases (backend/abstraction), observer pattern is better:
The event being listened is not related to the DOM elements (e.g. JS object's mutation)
You would like to have a better control on removeEventListener (e.g. multiple anonymous callback functions bound on an event type, you would like to move one of them)
The .notify method in the example is made to loop all the callback function in registry array, and try to execute all of them.
Here's a Codepen to show how observer help in the real world.
And here's a simple observer implementation when I learn Observer pattern:
var App = function() {
// This array will store all the subscribers.
this.subscribers = [];
}
// Subscribe, unsubscribe and publish are three base methods in this pattern
App.prototype.subscribe = function(subscriber) {
this.subscribers.push(subscriber);
}
App.prototype.unsubscribe = function(subscriber) {
for (var i = 0; i < this.subscribers.length; i++) {
if (this.subscribers[i] === subscriber) {
this.subscribers.splice(i, 1);
}
}
}
App.prototype.publish = function(message) {
for (var i = 0; i < this.subscribers.length; i++) {
console.log(this.subscribers[i] + ' got ' + message + '!');
}
}
// Testing code.
var myApp = new App();
myApp.subscribe('Timmy');
myApp.subscribe('Tommy');
myApp.publish('a new magazine'); // Both Timmy & Tommy got the new magazine
myApp.unsubscribe('Timmy');
myApp.publish('a new book'); // Now only Tommy got the new book
Attached the Codepen for reference.

$.empty() vs Backbone's View.remove()?

I understand that when a view is removed through .remove(), .stopListening() is called on that view to remove any event listeners associated with that view in Backbone. From the Backbone docs:
remove view.remove()
Removes a view from the DOM, and calls stopListening to remove any bound events that the view has listenTo'd.
I have views that are appended to a container that only have events related to dom actions on themselves through Backbone's events hook.
var View = Backbone.View.extend({
events : {
'input keyup' : 'searchDropdown'
},
searchDropdown: function () {
$('dropdown').empty();
//Appends views based on search
}
});
My question is really whether or not I'm leaking any memory (significant or not) when calling $.empty() on a container that effectively removes the view(s) appended inside of it. And if I am, is there any good convention for accessing and calling .remove() on those views?
You don't need any special framework for this but it's a good idea to implement removal properly and not depend on the browser being smart enough to do this. Sometimes in a large app you will find you specifically need to override the remove method to do some special cleanup - for instance you are using a library in that view which has a destroy method.
A modern browser tends to have a GC which is smart enough for most cases but I still prefer not to rely on that. Recently I came on to a project in Backbone which had no concept of subviews and I reduced the leaking nodes by 50% by changing to remove from empty (in Chrome 43). It's very hard to have a large javascript app not leak memory, my advice is to monitor it early on: If a DOM Element is removed, are its listeners also removed from memory?
Watch out for things which leak a lot of memory - like images. I had some code on a project that did something like this:
var image = new Image();
image.onLoad(.. reference `image` ..)
image.src = ...
Basically a pre-loader. And because we weren't explicitly doing image = null the GC never kicked in because the callback was referencing the image variable. On an image heavy site we were leaking 1-2mb with every page transition which was crashing phones. Setting the variable to null in a remove override fixed this.
Calling remove on subviews is as easy as doing something like this:
remove: function() {
this.removeSubviews();
Backbone.View.prototype.remove.call(this);
},
removeSubviews: function() {
if (!_.isEmpty(this.subViews)) {
_.invoke(this.subViews, 'remove');
this.subViews = [];
}
}
You just need to add your subview instances to an array. For example when you create a subview you could have an option like parentView: this and add it to the array of the parent. I have done more intricate subview systems in the past but that would work fine. On initialize of the views you could do something like:
var parentView = this.options.parentView;
if (parentView) {
(parentView.subViews = parentView.subViews || []).push(this);
}

How to achieve multiple event fires & events memory (features of events & promises combined)

My requirements
Because of the asynchronous architecture of my applications I am looking for an 'event' system which has the following two two properties:
The events should be able to fire multiple times (possible with events, but not with promises)
When I start listening for an event that has already been fired, I want the listener to fire once immediately (as with promises)
The reason for 1. is that there are a lot of events (e.g. the updating of certain data) that I want to be able to fire multiple times. But I would like to combine this with 2. so that if an event has already fired upon adding the listener, this listener gets called immediately. This is because I'm not always sure (and I don't want to be sure) which piece of code gets run first.
My 'solution'
I have thought up the following solution. I'm using this in an AngularJS application therefore the AngularJS context, but the question is applicable for Javascript in general. Note that I simplified the code.
app.controller('AppCtrl', function(CustomEventEmitter){
// Broadcast an event. No listener added so nothing happens
CustomEventEmitter.broadcast('event');
// Add the event listener. Because the event allready fired, the listener gets called immediatly
CustomEventEmitter.on('event', function(){
console.log('Event emitted');
});
// Broadcast an other event
CustomEventEmitter.broadcast('event');
});
app.service('CustomEventEmitter', function(){
var
listeners = {},
memory = [];
this.broadcast = function(name){
// The normal broadcasting of the event to the listener
if(listeners[name]) {
listeners[name].forEach(function(listener){
listener();
});
}
// Push the event into the 'memory'
memory.push(name);
};
this.on = function(name, listener){
// The normal adding of the listener
if(!listeners[name]) {
listeners[name] = [];
}
listeners[name].push(listener);
// If an event is already in memory, call the listener
if(memory.indexOf(name) !== -1) {
listener();
}
};
});
My questions
My questions are these:
What is the 'best practice' solution for my requirements?
What do you think of my 'solution'?
Am I missing something completely obvious?
The reason for the last question is that it seems to me that this is a very common design paradigm but I seem unable to find the best way to solve this in simple and concise way.
Note
I understand this can be solved with the adding of extra code (e.g. before adding the listener, check in an other way if the event you are going to listen for already happened) but this is not what I'm looking for.
A "property" from bacon.js does exactly what you are asking for. This falls under the broader category of functional reactive programming (FRP). The most popular two libraries for this in JavaScript are probably
bacon.js
Reactive Extensions
Both of which provide the specific tool you're asking for, along with a vast array of alternatives.

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