syms

syms - easy Symbol.for access

This is an incredibly simple wrapper around Symbol.for() using a Proxy object.

In short, the following:

const { Something, ANOTHER_THING, yetAnotherThing, ["A Fourth thing"]: THING4 } = syms;
const THING5 = syms["thing #5"]

Is equivalent to:

const Something = Symbol.for("Something");
const ANOTHER_THING = Symbol.for("ANOTHER_THING")
const yetAnotherThing = Symbol.for("yetAnotherThing")
const THING4 = Symbol.for("A Fourth Thing")
const THING5 = Symbol.for("thing #5")

This is just an object, where for any requested property, Symbol.for(x) is returned, where x is the property name. The entire motivation for this module is that I tend to prefer using Symbols for "internal" methods/properties/etc, and that const {WHATEVER, WHATEVER_ELSE} = require("syms") feels fairly convenient.

Reasoning

Future/Modern ES* standards include/propose a #-prefixed notation for "private" class data -- this module is intended as an alternative for that, where the primary concern isn't "private" vs "public", but "internal" vs "external", and access to this variable is not a question of "do I have permission" vs "do I know that what I'm doing is recommended usage or not".

In RFC terms, this is meant for properties which the user SHOULD NOT use, rather than those that the end-user MUST NOT use.

In other words, what this module communicates isn't "is this public or private", but rather "is this supported or unsupported" by your API.