I’ve been programming a lot in languages other than JavaScript, and one thing I’ve noticed is the convenience methods that each language’s core library provides.
This seems to be a common theme in JavaScript (String and Date have very few utilities, Array finally got some love with ES5).
Purpose of smap.js
Boris Smus makes an excellent suggestion for moving the web forward: forward polyfills. That’s exactly my intention with smap.js. I’m hoping you will think this is a great idea, and help discuss how ES6 Map should work or submit pull requests with your own ideas.
This is for everyone, not just JavaScript gurus. Standards bodies want feedback from developers like you.
One could argue that you could just add to Object.prototype, but that is known to cause unintended side effects that are often tough to track down.
The fact that we can stop bastardizing Object for dictionary-like behavior is exciting.
What smap.js does
smap.js includes a polyfill based on my ES6 Map Shim for environments without a Map implementation that conforms to the (incomplete) ES6 spec; then it adds a number of
convenience methods to help you work with Maps more easily. Here are some examples:
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var map = new Map();
map.set('foo', 'bar');
map.set(0, 42);
// Filter map by a function
map.filter(function(key, value, index) {
return typeof key == 'string';
});
=> new Map([[0, 42]])
// Merge Maps
map.merge(new Map([['baz', 'thing']]));
=> new Map([[0, 42], ['baz', 'thing']])
// map.get with a default
map.fetch('NON_EXISTANT', 'default');
=> 'default'
// Destructive filter (inline map delete)
map.reject(function(key, value) {
return typeof key == 'string';
});
map.has('thing');
=> false
// Remove all items
map.clear();
// Check if Map has no items
map.isEmpty();
=> true
Getting Started
You can install this via npm for node.js v0.8+
npm install smap
For browsers, download smap.js and include in your HTML:
<script type="text/javascript"
src="https://raw.github.com/eriwen/smap.js/master/smap-shim.min.js"></script>smap.js works in IE7+, Google Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera, and Node.JS and uses my es6-map-shim. It also works in IE and PhantomJS if you include the es5-shim first.
Your turn!
Go to the GitHub project page and tell me what you think, even if it’s just to say you think it’s a good idea.
If enough people like this idea, we can submit a proposal to TC39 to have this standardized or perhaps get implementations from browser vendors.
Let’s move the web forward.