# reducers [![Build Status](https://secure.travis-ci.org/Gozala/reducers.png)](http://travis-ci.org/Gozala/reducers) Library for higher-order manipulation of collections, based upon [reduce][]. ## Rationale Most functional languages (including beloved JS) typically come with some collection transformation functions like [filter][] and [map][] that take a logical collections and return transformed version of it. Unfortunately they tend to [complect][], by implying mechanism, order, laziness and representation. This library is an attempt to provide simple solution for some of the hard problems by decomplecting and building upon simple premise - minimum definition of collection is something that is reducible. More specifically library defines super-generalized and minimal abstraction for collections - a collection is some set of things that, when given a function to apply to its contents, can do so and give you the result, i.e. a collection is (at minimum) **reducible**. In other words, you can call `reduce` on it. A very minimal abstraction for collection is more powerful than it may seem at first! ## Basics Demonstration of features of this library requires some basic understanding of the abstraction above. So let's take a more practical look at the idea. Let's say we have a `reduce` function with *(very familiar)* API: ```js reduce(source, f, initial) // => accumulated result ``` It takes reducing function, a reducible `source` and `initial` value to accumulate reductions upon. In return it outputs an accumulated result. Reducing functions performing accumulation have a following shape: ```js f(result, value) // => new result ``` A reducing function is simply a binary function, akin to the one you might pass to reduce. While the two arguments might be treated symmetrically by the function, there is an implied semantic that distinguishes the arguments: the first argument is a `result` or accumulator that is being built up by the reduction, while the second is some new input `value` from the source being reduced. ## Transformations All of the collection operations can be expressed in terms of transformations. By the definition all transformations will produce **reducible** collections that can be reduced via `reduce` function defined above: ```js map(source, JSON.parse) // => reducible collection filter(numbers, isEven) // => reducible collection ``` In order to explain transformations we'll need a primitive API for producing **reducible** collections. Let's define one in form of `reducible` function that takes `accumulator` function and returns something that can be reduced via `reduce` function: ```js reducible(accumulator) // => reducible ``` Argument it takes, `accumulator` is a function that performs has following shape: ```js accumulate(next, initial) // => accumulated result ``` And when invoked it performs reductions via `next` reducing function starting from `initial` result. Now consider following implementation of `map` & `filter` transformation functions: ```js function map(f, source) { return reducible(function accumulator(next, initial) { return reduce(source, function reducer(result, input) { return next(result, f(input)) }, initial) }) } function filter(predicate, source) { return reducible(function accumulator(next, initial) { return reduce(source, function reducer(result, input) { return predicate(input) ? next(result, input) : result }, initial) }) } ``` There are a few things to note here: - Type of the source is irrelevant as long as it is reducible and there for can be reduced via `reduce` function. - Transformations do not traverse collections, instead they compose results that can be reduced by a receiver of the result later. - Transformations do not imply timing in which `reducer` in invoked with an each `input` of the `source`, there for `source` can be asynchronous. - Filtering can *skip* inputs by simply returning the incoming result. ## Features ### Laziness Library consists of transformation functions which, as seen above, when called do nothing except the creation of a recipe for a new collection, a recipe that is itself reducible. No work is done yet to the contained elements and no concrete collection is produced. All the transformations defer actual work to a point where result of transformations pipeline is being reduced. The beautiful thing is that this mechanism also works for all other traditional transformations `take`, `drop`, `merge` etc. Note the fact that `filter` is (potentially) contractive, and flatten is (potentially) expansive per step - the mechanism is general and not limited to 1:1 transformations. ### Uniformity Transformation functions are absolutely agnostic of the actual type of the `source`, as they just describe transformations and leave it up to `source` to do a reduction when result is consumed. Library takes a advantage of this feature and takes it even step further by treating every possible value as a reducible collection. Non collection values like numbers, booleans, objects etc. are treated as collection of single item, item being a value. Also `null` and `undefined` are considered as empty collections. This means that library can be used on any data type and more importantly transformations between different data types & compose naturally, which is great, let's you define logic in terms of abstractions instead of specific types. ### Composability All the transformations are fully composable as a matter of fact transformation pipelines produce compositions equivalent of a function compositions created by a [compose][]. Also type agnostic nature of the transformation functions enables compositions between different types of data. ### Performance Since transformations doesn't do the work, but merely create a recipe, there is no per-step allocation overhead, so it's faster. Also note that transformations are composed by curring transformation functions and all the actual work happens in a pipe line at the end when result is consumed, which means that no intermediate collections are produced, unlike it's a case with arrays etc.. Think [monad][] & [category theory][] if you fancy that. It can even [outperform arrays][benchmarks] when used wisely, although it's not the point & arrays are not the primary use case. ### Asynchronicity As it was already pointed out transformation functions do not imply any timing of individual value delivery, which means they can be used on asynchronous data structures like [node streams][stream-reduce] or [FRP][] events & signals. This feature is extremely powerful as it allows structuring complex asynchronous programs in simple intuitive code without a [callback hell][] and manual error propagation. _See [lstree][] for examples_. Even better actually exact same code can be used with both synchronous and asynchronous data structures. For example exact same code in [fs-reduce][] can be forced to do blocking IO by via `options.sync` option. ### Extensibility Since transformations are `source` type agnostic it's highly extensible. In fact implementation is based of polymorphic [method][] dispatch library and enables one to add support for new data types without any changes to this library or data types / classes them self. This feature is used by [stream-reduce][] library to add support for node streams. There are more examples of this feature in [callback-reduce][], [dom-reduce][], [http-reduce][]... Very likely all data types like `signal` provided by this library will be move out into own libraries too. ### Automatic disposal Reducible data structures feature auto cleanup of the resources at the end of consumption. For example [dom-reduce][] and [fs-reduce][] use this feature to remove event listeners / close file descriptors once input is consumed and to set you free from clean up constraints. This means you spend more time on actual problems rather and less on plumbing. ### Infinity Infinite data structures can be trivially represented via reducibles since nothing implies the end. In fact [dom-reduce][] uses this feature to represent user events in form of reducibles that pretty much can be infinite. That being said reducibles are not the best abstraction for the some types of infinite data structures specially ones that rather better be polled instead. ## F.A.Q. ##### 1. Q: Can this handle "back pressure" ? **A:** Short answer is **Yes**. See [IO Coordination] for more detailed answer ## Install npm install reducers ## Prior art - [Clojure reducers][] - [Haskell Enumerator/Iteratee][] [Clojure reducers]:http://clojure.com/blog/2012/05/15/anatomy-of-reducer.html [Haskell Enumerator/Iteratee]:http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Enumerator_and_iteratee [reduce]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reduce_%28higher-order_function%29 [map reduce]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MapReduce [map]:https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/map [filter]:https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Array/filter [Uniformity]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uniformity_%28complexity%29#Uniformity [complect]:http://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy [compose]:http://underscorejs.org/#compose [monad]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_%28category_theory%29 [Category theory]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_theory] [benchmarks]:http://jsperf.com/reducibles/4 [stream-reduce]:https://github.com/Gozala/stream-reduce [FRP]:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_reactive_programming [method]:https://github.com/Gozala/method [callback-reduce]:https://github.com/Gozala/callback-reduce [dom-reduce]:https://github.com/Gozala/dom-reduce [http-reduce]:https://github.com/Gozala/http-reduce [callback hell]:http://callbackhell.com/ [fs-reduce]:https://github.com/Gozala/fs-reduce [lstree]:https://github.com/Gozala/callback-reduce [IO Coordination]:https://github.com/Gozala/reducers/wiki/IO-Coordination