simple charm

live-code with streaming data!

installation

npm install simple-charm

usage:

in one file (index.js):

var charm = require('simple-charm')
  , spawn = require('child_process').spawn
 
function pathTo (filename) { 
  return require('path').join(__dirname, filename)
}
 
// one-script prints 1 to process.stdout, over and over
var process  = spawn('node', [pathTo('one-script.js')])
 
// `charm` em with app.js
var app = pathTo('/app.js')
// make sure to pass an absolute path
charm(app, process.stdout, 'data')

in another file (app.js):

module.exports = function (oneStream) {
  function addTwo (x) { return x+2 }
  var threeStream = oneStream.map(addTwo)
  threeStream.log()
}

now you can node index.js and, while it's running, live-code app.js!

you can even make syntax errors - it will catch them without stopping your streams!

here, oneStream is a Kefir stream, made out of our event emitter and accompanying event. map, filter, scan, whatever, and log as you go.

use this to mix-and-match various types of emitters - sockets, serial connections, any node stream, what have you

see examples/ for working with multiple streams, returning stuff back to inde.js (e.g. for logging), etc.

why

livecoding is really great

long history in lisp and all that, still a core priority in clojure and clojurescript

in javascript, event emitters are at the core of most asynchronous operations. i personally deal with streaming biosensor data, which sometimes comes over a bluetooth connection (serial) and sometimes through a websocket. in both cases, i need to parse and process the data.

live-coding with emitters

simple-charm lets you live-code with event emitters in node

it turns the events from an emitter into Kefir streams - a flexible, discretized data sturcture that lets you map, filter, buffer, etc... across many values over time.

then, you write a script that processes the stream. you can change this script in real time, and your emitter's values will be sent through updated versions, without a hitch.

may it serve you well

api

single stream:

charm(path, emitter, event)

or multiple streams:

charm(path, [emitter, event], [emitter2, event2], ...)

path refers to some file that exposes a function. the arguments to this function will be Kefir streams, one for each [emitter, event] pair passed to charm.

see examples/multiple-streams/ for an example with multiple in-streams

this function returns a Kefir stream as well - a stream of return values from the function in app.js every time app.js is saved and hot-reloaded, the new return value is emitted into to this stream.

see examples/logging/ for one use case of this

debugging

be sure to pass charm the absolute path of your script. see example.

LICENSE

BSD-2-Clause