perchance

A simple maybe monad for JavaScript. Handle nulls and undefineds more gracefully with a maybe monad similar to functional languages like Haskell.

Install

$ npm install perchance

Usage

Perchance comes with three functions, maybe, Just, and Nothing. You can use these functions to create more functional code that avoids lots of if-else checks for null or undefined. The real beauty of the maybe monad comes from being able to wrap a value, apply transformations to it, and then unwrap the final value whether it's a real value or null or undefined.

Just

Just is a function that returns an internal _Just object that wraps regular values ike numbers, strings, objects, etc. The only two values that you can't wrap are null and undefined. When you try to wrap them, you get back a _Nothing singleton instead. We'll see more of _Nothing later below.

import { Just } from 'perchance';

Just(42)
  .map(n => n * 2)
  .unwrap(); // returns 84

Just('hello')
  .map(greeting => greeting + ' world')
  .unwrap(phrase => phrase + '!'); // map in unwrap to return 'hello world!'

Nothing

Nothing is a function that returns an internal singleton object _Nothing. _Nothing acts as a placeholder for null and undefined but has the same API as _Just objects. This allows you to use OO-type functional code to deal with nulls and undefineds in your code without if-else checks.

The real power comes in the unwrap method. The unwrap method actually takes two functions. The first function will only be invoked if the receiver is an instance of _Just. If the receiver is _Nothing, then the second function will be invoked. With the syntactical sugar of ES2015 arrow functions, this allows you to write code close to pattern matching in functional languages.

Without the second function, unwrap will throw an error on Nothing.

import { Nothing } from 'perchance';

Nothing()
  .map(n => n * 2)
  .unwrap(
    n => n,               // won't be invoked
    _ => 'Got nothing'    // will be invoked
  ); // return 'Got nothing'

Nothing().unwrap(); // throws an error

maybe

maybe is a convenience function for wrapping values without using Just or Nothing explicitly. As you might guess, if you wrap null or undefined with maybe, then you'll get back _Nothing. Otherwise, you'll get back that value wrapped with _Just.

import { maybe } from 'perchance';

const half = (n) => {
  if (n % 2 === 0) {
    return n / 2;
  }

  return null;
}

maybe(half(4))
  .unwrap(
    v => v,
    _ => 'Could not halve integer'
  ); // returns 2

maybe(half(5))
  .unwrap(
    v => v,
    _ => 'Could not halve integer'
  ); // returns 'Could not halve integer'

API

maybe

maybe(null | undefined): _Nothing
maybe(value: T): _Just<T>

Just

Just(null | undefined): _Nothing
Just(value: T): _Just<T>

_Just#map

Transforms the wrapped value, returning a new instance of _Just. If the mapping function returns null or undefined, then it returns _Nothing.

alias: fmap

_Just<T>
  #map(fn: (value: T) => U): _Just<U>

_Just<T>
  #map(fn: (value: T) => null | undefined): _Nothing

_Just#ap

Applies a wrapped function to the wrapped value of another _Just instance or a no-op if passed _Nothing.

alias: apply

_Just<fn: (value: T) => U>
  #ap(mappable: _Nothing): _Nothing

_Just<fn: (value: T) => U>
  #ap(mappable: _Just<T>): _Just<U>

_Just#bind

Takes a function that returns a _Just or _Nothing, applies that function to the wrapped value, and returns a new _Just with that wrapped value (or _Nothing if the function argument returned _Nothing).

_Just<T>
  #bind(fn: (value: T) => _Just<U>): _Just<U>

_Just<T>
  #bind(fn: (value: T) => _Nothing): _Nothing

_Just#unwrap

Unwraps the inner value if no arguments are passed. Invokes and returns the return value of the first function argument otherwise, passing in the wrapped value to the function.

_Just<T>
  #unwrap(): T

_Just<T>
  #unwrap(fn: (value: T) => U): U

Nothing

Nothing(): _Nothing

_Nothing methods

aliases:

method	alias name
map	fmap
ap	apply

_Nothing<T>
  #map(fn: (value: T) => U): _Nothing

_Nothing<fn: (value: T) => U>
  #ap(mappable: any): _Nothing

_Nothing<T>
  #bind(fn: (value: T) => _Just<U>): _Nothing

_Nothing<T>
  #bind(fn: (value: T) => _Nothing): _Nothing

_Nothing#unwrap

Invokes and returns the return value of the second function argument. Throws an error if the second function argument is missing.

_Nothing<T>
  #unwrap(): throws

_Nothing<T>
  #unwrap(fn: () => T): T