utile

A drop-in replacement for util with some additional advantageous functions

Motivation

Javascript is definitely a "batteries not included language" when compared to languages like Ruby or Python. Node.js has a simple utility library which exposes some basic (but important) functionality:

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$ node
> var util = require('util');
> util.
(...)

util.debug                 util.error                 util.exec                  util.inherits              util.inspect
util.log                   util.p                     util.print                 util.pump                  util.puts

When one considers their own utility library, why ever bother requiring util again? That is the approach taken by this module. To compare:

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$ node
> var utile = require('./lib')
> utile.
(...)

utile.async                 utile.capitalize            utile.clone                 utile.cpr                   utile.createPath            utile.debug
utile.each                  utile.error                 utile.exec                  utile.file                  utile.filter                utile.find
utile.inherits              utile.log                   utile.mixin                 utile.mkdirp                utile.p                     utile.path
utile.print                 utile.pump                  utile.puts                  utile.randomString          utile.requireDir            uile.requireDirLazy
utile.rimraf

As you can see all of the original methods from util are there, but there are several new methods specific to utile. A note about implementation: no node.js native modules are modified by utile, it simply copies those methods.

Methods

The utile modules exposes some simple utility methods:

• .each(obj, iterator): Iterate over the keys of an object.
• .mixin(target [source0, source1, ...]): Copies enumerable properties from source0 ... sourceN onto target and returns the resulting object.
• .clone(obj): Shallow clones the specified object.
• .capitalize(str): Capitalizes the specified str.
• .randomString(length): randomString returns a pseudo-random ASCII string (subset) the return value is a string of length ⌈bits/6⌉ of characters from the base64 alphabet.
• .filter(obj, test): return an object with the properties that test returns true on.
• .args(arguments): Converts function arguments into actual array with special callback, cb, array, and last properties. Also supports optional argument contracts. See the example for more details.
• .requireDir(directory): Requires all files and directories from directory, returning an object with keys being filenames (without trailing .js) and respective values being return values of require(filename).
• .requireDirLazy(directory): Lazily requires all files and directories from directory, returning an object with keys being filenames (without trailing .js) and respective values (getters) being return values of require(filename).
• .format([string] text, [array] formats, [array] replacements): Replace formats in text with replacements. This will fall back to the original util.format command if it is called improperly.

Packaged Dependencies

In addition to the methods that are built-in, utile includes a number of commonly used dependencies to reduce the number of includes in your package.json. These modules are not eagerly loaded to be respectful of startup time, but instead are lazy-loaded getters on the utile object

• .async: Async utilities for node and the browser
• .inflect: Customizable inflections for node.js
• .mkdirp: Recursively mkdir, like mkdir -p, but in node.js
• .rimraf: A rm -rf util for nodejs
• .cpr: Asynchronous recursive file copying with Node.js

Installation

Installing npm (node package manager)

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  curl http://npmjs.org/install.sh | sh

Installing utile

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  [sudo] npm install utile

Tests

All tests are written with vows and should be run with npm:

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  $ npm test

Author: Charlie Robbins

Contributors: Dominic Tarr, Marak Squires

License: MIT