Clojure threading macros in ES6
While working in the functionality for getting a docker-compose path from the cursor position, I realized at some point I was writing constantly code like this:
let first_result = func_call1(val);
let second_result = func_call2(first_result);
let third_result = func_call3(second_result);
...etc...
This is not necessarily bad, it improves code readability and helps to reason about the flow of execution, normally better than calling those functions in a nested way:
func_call3(func_call2(func_call1(val))); // Phew.
But yet, it feels somewhat cumbersome to nest too many function calls that way. Some time ago I started looking into Clojure for fun and discovered threading macros. Thread first ('->') and Thread last(->>) macros pipe the result of the application of a function to a value to the next function in the list. The difference is that thread first adds the result as the first argument to the next function and thread last to the last one.
Wouldn't it be nice to have some kind of mechanism in Javascript?. Looking around I found someone had already written a nice article about it. The target is to have a function to be called like this:
let result = thread("->", "3",
parseInt,
[sum, 3],
[diff, 10],
str); // "-4"
And what would be going on under the hood is this:
let sameresult = diff(sum(3, parseInt("3")), 10);
So I decided to reimplement the code taking advantage of the new features that came along with ES6(arrow functions, destructuring, rest parameters...).
const thread = (operator, first, ...args) => {
let isThreadFirst;
switch (operator) {
case '->>':
isThreadFirst = false;
break
case '->':
isThreadFirst = true;
break;
default:
throw new Error('Operator not supported');
break;
}
return args.reduce((prev, next) => {
if (Array.isArray(next)) {
const [head, ...tail] = next;
return isThreadFirst ? head.apply(this, [prev, ...tail]) : head.apply(this, tail.concat(prev));
}
else {
return next.call(this, prev);
}
}, first);
}
So when executing the code using the thread first operator for example:
let result = thread("->", "3",
parseInt,
[sum, 3],
[diff, 10],
str); // "-4"
console.log(result); // -4
and using the thread last operator:
let result = thread("->>", "3",
parseInt,
[sum, 3],
[diff, 10],
str); // "-4"
console.log(result); // 4
Have fun!