letsfreezethat

Let's Freeze Tha{t|w}!

LetsFreezeThat is an unapologetically minimal library to make working with immutable objects in JavaScript less of a chore.

npm install letsfreezethat

{ lets, freeze, thaw, } = require 'letsfreezethat'

d = lets { foo: 'bar', nested: [ 2, 3, 5, 7, ], }                    # create object
e = lets d, ( d ) -> d.nested.push 11                                # modify copy in callback
console.log 'd                          ', d                         # { foo: 'bar', nested: [ 2, 3, 5, 7 ] }
console.log 'e                          ', e                         # { foo: 'bar', nested: [ 2, 3, 5, 7, 11 ] }
console.log 'd is e                     ', d is e                    # false
console.log 'Object.isFrozen d          ', Object.isFrozen d         # true
console.log 'Object.isFrozen d.nested   ', Object.isFrozen d.nested  # true
console.log 'Object.isFrozen e          ', Object.isFrozen e         # true
console.log 'Object.isFrozen e.nested   ', Object.isFrozen e.nested  # true

LetsFreezeThat copies the core functionality of immer (also see here); the basic insight being that

• deeply immutable objects are a great idea for quite a few reasons;
• working with immutable objects—especially to obtain copies with deeply nested updates—can be a pain in JavaScript since the language does zilch to support you;
• JavaScript does have lexical scopes and lightweight function syntax;
• so let's use callbacks that demarcate the scope where modification of object graphs is acceptable.

Now immer does a lot more than that as it also allows you to track changes and so on. It also allows you to improve performance by foregoing object.freeze() altogether (something that I may implement in LetsFreezeThat at a later point in time).

What I wanted was a library so small that performance was probably optimal; turns out 50 LOC is generous for a functional subset of immer.

Let's fix() That!

As of version 2, there's also a fix() method that allows to hammer down a particular attribute of a given target object:

{ fix, } = require 'letsfreezethat'
d = { foo: 'bar', }
fix d, 'sql', { query: "select * from main;", }
console.log ( k for k of d ) # [ 'foo', 'sql' ]
try d.sql       = 'other' catch error then console.log error.message # Cannot assign to read only property 'sql' of object '#<Object>'
try d.sql.query = 'other' catch error then console.log error.message # Cannot assign to read only property 'query' of object '#<Object>'

fix() takes three arguments: the target object, a name, and a value. After calling fix target, name, value, target[ name ] will equal value, as if one had used assignment, as in target[ name ] = value. However, the attribute will be tacked onto target using Object.defineProperty with a descriptor { enumerable: true, writable: false, configurable: false, value: ( freeze value ), }, so it cannot (in strict mode) be altered itself (because it is frozen), nor can target[ name ] be re-assigned or modified (because it is not writable and not configurable).

Thus, fix() covers a middle ground between all-out freezing and having everything mutable, all the time. It is suitable for those situation where some parts of a given state object have to remain updatable when other parts are not meant to be fiddled with.

Observe that the nofreeze version of fix() uses plain assignment and no attribute configuration, so nofreeze.fix target, name, value is just a fancy way of writing target[ name ] = value. This detail may change in the future.

Usage

You can use the lets(), freeze() and thaw() methods by requireing them as in { lets, freeze, thaw, } = require 'letsfreezethat', but probably you only want lets(). lets() is similar to immer's produce(), except simpler.

lets() takes a value to start with, call it d, and an optional callback function to modify d.

Where the callback is not given, lets d is equivalent to freeze d which returns a copy of d with all properties recursively frozen.

Where the callback is given, that's where you can modify a temporary copy of the first argument d. I've come to always name those copies the same—d most of the time—but that can be confusing at first.

You should think of

d = lets { key: 'word', value: 'OMG', }
d = lets d, ( d ) -> d.size = 3

as though it was written more like this:

frozen_data_v1 = lets { key: 'word', value: 'OMG', }
frozen_data_v2 = lets frozen_data_v1, ( draft ) -> draft.size = 3

The second style has the advantage of being more explicit about the identity of the various values involved; also, it is sometimes important to be able to reference back to some property of frozen_data_v1 after the changes, so there's nothing wrong with writing it the more eloquent way.

Observe you can also use freeze() and thaw() to the same effect:

{ lets
  freeze
  thaw }        = require 'letsfreezethat'

...

original_data   = { key: 'word', value: 'OMG', }
frozen_data_v1  = freeze original_data

...

draft           = thaw frozen_data_v1
draft.size      = 3
frozen_data_v2  = freeze draft

...

This is more explicit but also more repetitive.

Performance And nofreeze Option

According to my highly scientific tests, LetsFreezeThat is roughly around 3 times as fast as immer. When your software works to plan and you made sure you used 'use strict' so JavaScript would have throw an error if you had accidentally tried to modify a frozen value, you can get some extra miles for free by replacing { lets, freeze, thaw, } = require 'letsfreezethat' with { lets, freeze, thaw, } = ( require 'letsfreezethat' ).nofreeze. These methods avoid to call Object.freeze() and run about twice as fast as the freezing versions: thaw() just returns its only argument, making it a no-op; freeze() just performs a deep copy; lets() will likewise make a deep copy, and the value that you can modify in the callback will be the return value of the method.

What it Does, and What it Doesn't

• LetsFreezeThat always gives back a copy of the value passed in, no matter whether you use lets(), freeze(), or thaw(); this means that even when you don't manipulate a value, the old reference will remain untouched:

  d = lets d, ( d ) -> # do nothing
  

  This is different from immer's produce(), which will give you back the original object in case no modification was made.

• LetsFreezeThat does not do structural sharing or copy-on-write (COW), nor will it do so in the future. Both structural sharing and COW are great techniques to drive down memory requirements, enhance cache locality and save on garbage collection cycles, but they do come with additional complexities.

  The intended use case for LetsFreezeThat are situations where you have many rather small, rather shallow objects, which offer little opportunity for the benefits of structural sharing and COW to kick in.

• LetsFreezeThat does not track changes; if you need a report on what properties were affected by some part of your program, use immer instead. While having a change manifest may be potentially useful when, say, persisting an object to a DB, those benefits will diminish with smaller object size, same as with structural sharing.

Partial Freezing (Experimental)

“[...] when there are disputes among persons, we can simply say: Let's compute!, without further ado, to see who is right”—Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, 1685

It is sometimes desirable to freeze as many properties of a given object as possible and still keep some properties in a mutable state; this is often the case when a custom object contains other objects from libraries one has no control over.

For example, I recently ran into that conundrum when writing a library that accepts an object representing a database and some configuration in order to read from and write to the DB. That library will construct an object { foo: 42, bar: [...], db, } to represent both the configuration and the DB instance; naturally, I would very much like to freeze the configurational part of that object, but I can't do that with that 3rd-party DB instance which might rely on being mutable.

This is where (require 'letsfreezethat' ).partial comes in. It offers the same methods as the standard version of LetsFreezeThat, but they are implemented (with Object.seal()) in such a way that dynamic properties that use getters and/or setters will not be frozen. Such properties can be defined by JavaScript's Object.defineProperty() method; because that is a bit cumbersome, LetsFreezeThat/partial implements a method

lets_compute = ( original, name, get, set = null ) -> ...

to simplify the process.

As a trivial example, let's define a dynamic property time to always reflect the current time in milliseconds; first the approach that won't work:

d = { foo: 'bar', }
Object.defineProperty d, 'time', { get: ( -> Date.now() ), }
d.time # 1569337726
...
d.time # 1569337738

OK, great. But when you d = freeze d, then that time attribute gets frozen, too:

{ freeze, } = require 'letsfreezethat'
d = freeze d
d.time # 1569337742
...
d.time # 1569337742
...
d.time # 1569337742

To make this work as intended, use LetsFreezeThat/partial:

{ freeze, } = ( require 'letsfreezethat' ).partial
d = freeze d
d.time # 1569337742
...
d.time # 1569337744
...
d.time # 1569337900

Here is how one would typically use partial freezing and lets_compute():

{ lets, lets_compute, } = ( require 'letsfreezethat' ).partial
d = lets { foo: 'bar', }                        # d.foo can't be changed, can't add attributes to d
d = lets_compute d, 'time', ( -> Date.now() )   # as above, but time keeps changing:
d.time # 1569337742
...
d.time # 1569337744