Safe-obj

Underscore helpers to make object accessors safe

Install

npm install safe-obj --save

Usage

I came (partly) from a Perl background where you could say $obj->{thing}->{another_thing}->{more_things}, and it would not blow up even if $obj was totally empty. Similarly, you could say $obj->{thing}->{foo} = 'bar', even if $obj had no property called 'thing'. I don't miss everything about Perl, but I do miss that. In javascript, you'd have to say:

if (obj && obj.thing && obj.thing.another_thing && obj.thing.another_thing.more_things) {
  // I want to die a little bit
}

safe-obj exports an object that can be mixed into underscore like this:

_.mixin(require('safe-obj'));

that let's you access object properties with wild abandon. It has two functions, which are essentially opposites of one another.

Safe

Let's you access object properties (and array indices too!) regardless of whether they exist. If, at any point, a property returns undefined (where calling another object accessor would blow up), safe immediately just returns undefined (or a default, if you provide one).

var obj = {}

// returns undefined
var innerProp = _(obj).safe('foo.bar.baz.0.hello.world'); 

// returns [] - useful if you want to call array methods but don't want to check the type
var anotherProp = _(obj).safe('a.brave.new.world', []); 

Expand

Let's you assign to any arbitrarily deep and non-existent property on an object. Any non-existent properties are expanded into objects.

var obj = {}

_(obj).expand('foo.bar.baz', 'hello world');

// obj now equals: {
//   foo: {
//     bar: {
//       baz: 'hello world'
//     }
//   }
// }

Expand is likely to be finnicky (at the moment) with expanding arrays. It's untested, and my guess is that it will create object properties with numbers. Something like

property: {
  0: {
    // more stuff
  }
}

I'd like to make that work more as expected in a future release, but for now, don't expect it to work.