Surrounded

Bring your own complexity

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Surrounded aims to make things simple and get out of your way.

Most of what you care about is defining the behavior of objects. How they interact is important. The purpose of this library is to clear away the details of getting things setup and to allow you to make changes to the way you handle roles.

There are two main parts to this library.

  1. Surrounded gives objects an implicit awareness of other objects in their environments.
  2. Surrounded::Context helps you create objects which encapsulate other objects. These are the environments.

First, take a look at creating contexts. This is where you'll spend most of your time.

Easily create encapsulated environments for your objects.

Typical initialization of an environment, or a Context in DCI, has a lot of code. For example:

class MyEnvironment

  attr_reader :employee, :boss
  private :employee, :boss
  def initialize(employee, boss)
    @employee = employee.extend(Employee)
    @boss = boss
  end

  module Employee
    # extra behavior here...
  end
end

This code allows the MyEnvironment class to create instances where it will have an employee and a boss role internally. These are set to attr_readers and are made private.

The employee is extended with behaviors defined in the Employee module, and in this case there's no extra stuff for the boss so it doesn't get extended with anything.

Most of the time you'll follow a pattern like this. Some objects will get extra behavior and some won't. The modules that you use to provide the behavior will match the names you use for the roles to which you assign objects.

By adding Surrounded::Context you can shortcut all this work.

class MyEnvironment
  extend Surrounded::Context

  initialize(:employee, :boss)

  module Employee
    # extra behavior here...
  end
end

Surrounded gives you an initialize class method which does all the setup work for you.

Managing Roles

I don't want to use modules. Can't I use something like SimpleDelegator?

Well, it just so happens that you can. This code will work just fine:

class MyEnvironment
  extend Surrounded::Context

  initialize(:employee, :boss)

  class Employee < SimpleDelegator
    # extra behavior here...
  end
end

Instead of extending the employee object, Surrounded will run Employee.new(employee) to create the wrapper for you. You'll need to include the Surrounded module in your wrapper, but we'll get to that.

But the syntax can be even simpler than that if you want.

class MyEnvironment
  extend Surrounded::Context

  initialize(:employee, :boss)

  role :employee do
    # extra behavior here...
  end
end

By default, this code will create a module for you named Employee. If you want to use a wrapper, you can do this:

class MyEnvironment
  extend Surrounded::Context

  initialize(:employee, :boss)

  wrap :employee do
    # extra behavior here...
  end
end

But if you're making changes and you decide to move from a module to a wrapper or from a wrapper to a module, you'll need to change that method call. Instead, you could just tell it which type of role to use:

class MyEnvironment
  extend Surrounded::Context

  initialize(:employee, :boss)

  role :employee, :wrapper do
    # extra behavior here...
  end
end

The default available types are :module, :wrap or :wrapper, and :interface. We'll get to interface below. The :wrap and :wrapper types are the same and they'll both create classes which inherit from SimpleDelegator and include Surrounded for you.

These are minor little changes which highlight how simple it is to use Surrounded.

Well... I want to use Casting so I get the benefit of modules without extending objects. Can I do that?

Yup. The ability to use Casting is built-in. If the objects you provide to your context respond to cast_as then Surrounded will use that.

Ok. So is that it?

There's a lot more. Let's look at the individual objects and what they need for this to be valuable...

Objects' access to their environments

Add Surrounded to your objects to give them awareness of other objects.

class User
  include Surrounded
end

Now the User instances will be able to implicitly access objects in their environment.

Via method_missing those User instances can access a context object it stores in an internal collection.

Inside of the MyEnvironment context we saw above, the employee and boss objects are instances of User for this example.

Because the User class includes Surrounded, the instances of that class will be able to access other objects in the same context implicitly.

Let's make our context look like this:

class MyEnvironment
  # other stuff from above is still here...

  def shove_it
    employee.quit
  end

  role :employee do
    def quit
      say("I'm sick of this place, #{boss.name}!")
      stomp
      throw_papers
      say("I quit!")
    end
  end
end

What's happening in there is that when the shove_it method is called on the instance of MyEnvironment, the employee has the ability to refer to boss because it is in the same context, e.g. the same environment.

The behavior defined in the Employee module assumes that it may access other objects in it's local environment. The boss object, for example, is never explicitly passed in as an argument.

What Surrounded does for us is to make the relationship between objects and gives them the ability to access each other. Adding new or different roles to the context now only requires that we add them to the context and nothing else. No explicit references must be passed to each individual method. The objects are aware of the other objects around them and can refer to them by their role name.

I didn't mention how the context is set, however.

Tying objects together

Your context will have methods of it's own which will trigger actions on the objects inside, but we need those trigger methods to set the accessible context for each of the contained objects.

Here's an example of what we want:

class MyEnvironment
  # other stuff from above is still here...

  def shove_it
    employee.store_context(self)
    employee.quit
    employee.remove_context
  end

  role :employee do
    def quit
      say("I'm sick of this place, #{boss.name}!")
      stomp
      throw_papers
      say("I quit!")
    end
  end
end

Now that the employee has a reference to the context, it won't blow up when it hits boss inside that quit method.

We saw how we were able to clear up a lot of that repetitive work with the initialize method, so this is how we do it here:

class MyEnvironment
  # other stuff from above is still here...

  trigger :shove_it do
    employee.quit
  end

  role :employee do
    def quit
      say("I'm sick of this place, #{boss.name}!")
      stomp
      throw_papers
      say("I quit!")
    end
  end
end

By using this trigger keyword, our block is the code we care about, but internally the method is created to first set all the objects' current contexts.

The context will also store the triggers so that you can, for example, provide details outside of the environment about what triggers exist.

context = MyEnvironment.new(current_user, the_boss)
context.triggers #=> [:shove_it]

You might find that useful for dynamically defining user interfaces.

Sometimes I'd rather not use this DSL, however. I want to just write regular methods.

We can do that too. You'll need to opt in to this by specifying trigger :your_method_name for the methods you want to use.

class MyEnvironment
  # other stuff from above is still here...

  def shove_it
    employee.quit
  end
  trigger :shove_it

  # or in Ruby 2.x
  trigger def shove_it
    employee.quit
  end

  role :employee do
    def quit
      say("I'm sick of this place, #{boss.name}!")
      stomp
      throw_papers
      say("I quit!")
    end
  end
end

This will allow you to write methods like you normally would. They are aliased internally with a prefix and the method name that you use is rewritten to add and remove the context for the objects in this context. The public API of your class remains the same, but the extra feature of wrapping your method is handled for you.

This works like Ruby's public,protected, and private keywords in that you can send symbols of method names to it. But trigger does not alter the parsing of the document like those core keywords do. In other words, you can't merely type trigger on one line, and have methods added afterward be treated as trigger methods.

Where roles exist

By using Surrounded::Context you are declaring a relationship between the objects inside playing your defined roles.

Because all the behavior is defined internally and only relevant internally, those relationships don't exist outside of the environment.

Surrounded makes all of your role modules and classes private constants. It's not a good idea to try to reuse behavior defined for one context in another area.

The role DSL

Using the role method to define modules and classes takes care of the setup for you. This way you can swap between implementations:


  # this uses modules
  role :source do
    def transfer
      self.balance -= amount
      destination.balance += amount
      self
    end
  end

  # this uses SimpleDelegator and Surrounded
  role :source, :wrap do
    def transfer
      self.balance -= amount
      destination.balance += amount
      __getobj__
    end
  end

  # this uses a special interface object which pulls
  # methods from a module and applies them to your object.
  role :source, :interface do
    def transfer
      self.balance -= amount
      destination.balance += amount
      self
    end
  end

The :interface option is a special object which has all of its methods removed (excepting __send__ and object_id) so that other methods will be pulled from the ones that you define, or from the object it attempts to proxy.

Notice that the :interface allows you to return self whereas the :wrap acts more like a wrapper and forces you to deal with that shortcoming by using it's wrapped-object-accessor method: __getobj__.

If you'd like to choose one and use it all the time, you can set the default:

class MoneyTransfer
  extend Surrounded::Context

  self.default_role_type = :interface # also :wrap, :wrapper, or :module

  role :source do
    def transfer
      self.balance -= amount
      destination.balance += amount
      self
    end
  end
end

Or, if you like, you can choose the default for your entire project:

Surrounded::Context.default_role_type = :interface

class MoneyTransfer
  extend Surrounded::Context

  role :source do
    def transfer
      self.balance -= amount
      destination.balance += amount
      self
    end
  end
end

Policies for the application of role methods

There are 2 approaches to applying new behavior to your objects.

By default your context will add methods to an object before a trigger is run and behaviors will be removed after the trigger is run.

Alternatively you may set the behaviors to be added during the initialize method of your context.

Here's how it works:

class ActivatingAccount
  extend Surrounded::Context

  apply_roles_on(:trigger) # this is the default
  # apply_roles_on(:initialize) # set this to apply behavior from the start

  initialize(:activator, :account)

  role :activator do
    def some_behavior; end
  end

  def non_trigger_method
    activator.some_behavior # not available unless you apply roles on initialize
  end

  trigger :some_trigger_method do
    activator.some_behavior # always available
  end
end

Why are those options there?

When you initialize a context and apply behavior at the same time, you'll need to remove that behavior. For example, if you are using Casting AND you apply roles on initialize:

context = ActiviatingAccount.new(current_user, Account.find(123))
context.do_something
current_user.some_behavior # this method is still available
current_user.uncast # you'll have to manually cleanup

But if you go with the default and apply behaviors on trigger, your roles will be cleaned up automatically:

context = ActiviatingAccount.new(current_user, Account.find(123))
context.do_something
current_user.some_behavior # NoMethodError

Overview in code

Here's a view of the possibilities in code.

# set default role type for *all* contexts in your program
Surrounded::Context.default_role_type = :module # also :wrap, :wrapper, or :interface

class ActiviatingAccount
  extend Surrounded::Context

  apply_roles_on(:trigger) # this is the default
  # apply_roles_on(:initialize) # set this to apply behavior from the start

  # set the default role type only for this class
  self.default_role_type = :module # also :wrap, :wrapper, or :interface

  # shortcut initialization code
  initialize(:activator, :account)
  # or handle it yourself
  def initialize(activator, )
    # this must be done to handle the mapping of roles to objects
    # pass an array of arrays with role name symbol and the object for that role
    map_roles([[:activator, activator],[:account, ]])
  end

  role :activator do # module by default
    def some_behavior; end
  end

  #  role :activator, :module do
  #    def some_behavior; end
  #  end
  #
  #  role :activator, :wrap do
  #    def some_behavior; end
  #  end
  #
  #  role :activator, :interface do
  #    def some_behavior; end
  #  end
  #
  # use your own classes if you don't want SimpleDelegator
  # class SomeSpecialRole
  #   include Surrounded # you must remember this
  #   # Surrounded assumes SomeSpecialRole.new(some_special_role)
  #   def initialize(...);
  #     # ... your code here
  #   end
  # end

  # works as a trigger (assigning the current context) only if set_methods_as_triggers is set
  def regular_method
    activator.some_behavior # behavior not available unless you apply roles on initialize
  end

  trigger :some_trigger_method do
    activator.some_behavior # behavior always available
  end

  trigger def some_other_trigger
    activator.some_behavior # behavior always available
  end

  def regular_non_trigger
    activator.some_behavior # behavior always available with the following line
  end
  trigger :regular_non_trigger # turns the method into a trigger  
end

Dependencies

The dependencies are minimal. The plan is to keep it that way but allow you to configure things as you need. The Triad project was written specifically to manage the mapping of roles and objects to the modules which contain the behaviors.

If you're using Casting, for example, Surrounded will attempt to use that before extending an object, but it will still work without it.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'surrounded'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install surrounded

Installation for Rails

See surrounded-rails

Contributing

  1. Fork it
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create new Pull Request