MOLGENIS expressions

Library for evaluation of simple expressions given a context of variables. Compatible with the expression language used in Survey JS. Works both in JavaScript and in the JVM.

Some examples:

• age({dateOfBirth}) >= 18 and !{driverslicense}
• {reason} anyof ['No', 'Unsure']
• regex('^[1-9][0-9]{3}[\\s]?[A-Z]{2}$', {zipcode}, 'i')

operators

In decreasing order of precedence, the operators are:

unary operators

operator	meaning
negate / !	Boolean negation !a is false if a is truthy
empty	a empty if a is [], "" or null/undefined
notempty	a notempty if a is not [], "" or null/undefined

binary set operators

Can be applied to elements or lists of elements.

operator	meaning
contains/allof	a contains b if all elements in b are also in a
notcontains	a notcontains b if at least one element in b is not in a
anyof	a anyof b if at least one element in b is also in a

arithmetic operators

With their usual meaning and precedence: ^, * / %, + -.

To achieve compatibility with JavaScript, all numerical values are converted to Doubles in the JVM. The modulo operator % performs integer modulo division after converting the operands to Long values.

comparison operators

Compare numerical values. Can be denoted by symbol or name:

• <= / lessorequal
• < / less
• = / equal
• >= / greaterorequal
• > / greater
• != / notequal

boolean operators

• && / and
• || / or

truthiness

The boolean operators convert their operands to booleans based on their 'truthiness'. All values are truthy, except for:

• false
• 0
• "" (the empty string)
• null/undefined
• NaN

functions

The following functions are available

today

today() returns today's date, in the local timezone, in the form 'yyyy-mm-dd'

currentYear

currentYear() returns the year of today's date, in the local timezone, as an integer number

age

age(dob, date) returns the age given date of birth dob on a given date. The parameters must be an yyyy-mm-dd ISO date string.

regex

regex(expression, string, flags) tests a string against a regular expression, returns true if it finds any matches. Flags is a string of characters. Available flags:

flag	meaning
i	case insensitive
m	multiline
s	dotall

JavaScript

Check the demo.

The library is quite large (currently 334kB, 88kB zipped), because some of the Scala SDK gets included. It can be added using npm:

npm add @molgenis/expressions

In your code, import the module:

import Expressions from '@molgenis/expressions'

To evaluate an expression:

// returns 42
Expressions.evaluate("{foo}", {foo: 42})

It will throw an error if parsing or evaluation fails.

To parse and get a list of variable names:

// returns ['foo']
Expressions.variableNames("{foo}")

Java

First add the library as a dependency.

maven

Add the MOLGENIS nexus as a repository

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>molgenis-nexus</id>
    <name>Maven public group on registry.molgenis.org</name>
    <url>https://registry.molgenis.org/repository/maven-releases</url>
  </repository>
</repositories>

and include the library as a dependency

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.molgenis</groupId>
  <artifactId>molgenis-expressions_2.13</artifactId>
  <version>0.14.2</version>
</dependency>

gradle (untested)

Add the MOLGENIS nexus as a repository

repositories {
  maven {
    url "https://registry.molgenis.org/repository/maven-releases"
  }
}

and include the library as a dependency

implementation 'org.molgenis:molgenis-expressions_2.13:0.14.2'

evaluate expressions

In your code, create an Expressions instance. The parameter is the number of parsed expressions that it should cache. The library depends on Caffeine for the cache.

val evaluator = new Expressions(1000);
val expressions = List.of("{foo} > {bar}", "{foo} + {bar}");

Optionally, retrieve the variable names for a list of expressions, so that you know what variables to put in the context.

// returns Set<String> containing ["foo", "bar"]
evaluator.getAllVariableNames(expressions);

Optionally, check a single expression to see if it can be parsed

// throws ParseException
evaluator.getVariableNames("{foo");
// returns Set<String> containing ["foo", "bar]
evaluator.getVariableNames("{foo} > {bar}");

Parse and evaluate one or more expressions in a context:

val context = Map.of("foo", 3, "bar", 2);
// returns List<Object> containing [true, 5.0]
evaluator.parseAndEvaluate(expressions, context);