Sebastian
Intro
Sebastian is a flow control library aimed at encouraging developers to write organized, testable code. It works in the browser or with Node.js.
Rationale
There are many flow-control libraries out there, but none that I am quite satisfied with at the moment. Async is great, but I don't agree with Node.js-style callback conventions and I don't like mixing success and error condition logic. Also, I have found Async-wrapped code to be difficult to test. Sebastian is built to encourage construction of discrete chunks of manageable code that can be easily tested. I'm a big fan of Deferreds. Sebastian uses jQuery Deferred $.when() wrapper to treat asynchronous and synchronous steps/code the same.
Dependencies
- For Node.js, jquery-deferred, but Q support may be added at a later date.
- For browser environments, jQuery.
Documentation
For full documentation, check out the Sebastian GitHub page.
Getting started
To use as a Node.js module, install with NPM, or add as a dependency in your package.json.
npm install sebastian
Then, require the module and add a flow:
var flow = require("sebastian").flow;
flow("helloFlow")
.step("one", function() {
console.log("hello..");
}).step("two", function() {
console.log("hello 2..");
}).begin();
This creates a flow called "helloFlow", adds to steps two the flow, and starts the flow.
To use with an AMD module loader (only tested w/ RequireJS):
require(["jquery", "path/to/sebastian"], function($, sebastian) {
//call the local definition
sebastian.flow("blah")
.step("one", function() {
console.log("step one..");
})
.step("two", function() {
console.log("step two..");
})
.begin();
});
To use with old-school sequential script tags:
<script type="text/javascript" src="vendor/jquery/jquery.min.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="/sebastian.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
$.Flow("firstFlow")
.step("one", function() {
console.log("executing step one in firstFlow...");
})
.step("two", function() {
console.log("executing step two in firstFlow...");
}).begin();
</script>