An ES6 node module to translate a source object into a target object

Installation

npm install object-translation

How To Use

A simple translation example...

Given the following source object:

const source = {
    name: 'Steve',
    age: 35,
    hair_color: 'brown',
    hair_length: 'short',
    height: `6'1"`,
    weight: 170    
};

Translate the source into:

{
    "name": "Steve",
    "age": 35,
    "hair": { "color": "brown", "length": "short" },
    "stats": { "height": "6'1\"", "weight": "170lbs" }
}

By creating the following set of translation rules:

const translate = require('object-translation'),
    rules = [
        'name',
        'age',
        {
            target: 'hair',
            properties: [{ source: 'hair_(.*)', target: '$1' }]        
        },
        {
            target: 'stats',
            properties: [
                'height',
                {
                    source: 'weight',
                    filter: { find: '.*', replace: '$&lbs' }
                }
            ]
        }
    ];

console.log(JSON.stringify(translate(source, rules)));

Lets walk through the collection of translation rules above...

Rule:

'name',
'age'

Translation:

{ name: 'Steve', age: 35 } --> { name: 'Steve', age: 35 }

This is as basic as it gets. The first rule describes a single property, name, at the root of the source object and will create a property called name at the root of the target object. This rule could also be written as { source: 'name' } or { source: 'name', target: 'name' }.

The next rule, age, would do the same thing.

Rule:

{
    target: 'hair',
    properties: [{ source: 'hair_(.*)', target: '$1' }]
}

Translation:

{ hair_color: 'brown', hair_length: 'short' } --> { hair: { color: 'brown', length: 'short' } }

This is a more complex rule that defines a new property called hair at the root of the target object. hair will be an object since it's defined with the properties property. The properties property is a collection of more rules that are used to create the child properties of hair, and since there isn't a source defined in this rule, the rules in properties will start matching at the root of the source object. To learn more about properties see the properties section under Rules.

Rule:

{ 
    source: 'hair_(.*)', 
    target: '$1' 
}

Translation:

{ hair_color: 'brown', hair_length: 'short' } --> { color: 'brown', length: 'short' }

This lone rule inside of the properties property, will look at the root of the source object for any keys that match the regular expression hair_(.*) and use the first matching group of the key ($1) as the name of the properties to add to the root of the target object. This rule would match "hair_color" and "hair_length", resulting in the object { color: 'brown', length: 'short' } being assigned to the hair property of the target object.

Rule:

{
    target: 'stats',
    properties: [
        'height',
        {
            source: 'weight',
            filter: { find: '.*', replace: '$&lbs' }
        }
    ]
}

Translation:

{ height: `6'1"`, weight: 170 } --> { stats: { height: `6'1"`, weight: '170lbs' } }

This complex rule will create an object at the root of the target object called stats. The properties property in this rule is a collection of two rules.

Rule:

'height'

Translation:

{ height: `6'1"` } --> { height: `6'1"` }

The first rule, height, is a simple translation rule that looks for the property height at the root of the source object and creates the property height at the root of the target object.

Rule:

{
    source: 'weight',
    filter: { find: '.*', replace: '$&lbs' }
}

Translation:

{ weight: 170 } --> { weight: '170lbs' }

The second rule of the properties property looks for a property at the root of the source object called weight and creates a property at the root of the target object also called weight. This rule also defines a filter. Filters can be one filter or an array of filters, and are used to modify the transposed target value of the matching keys. This filter filter: { find: '.*', replace: '$&lbs' }, uses the regular expression from the find property to match the entire value and replaces it with the matched value and "lbs" appended to the end - 170lbs. To learn more about filters see the filter section under Rules.

To find more complex examples see the examples in the tests installed with this module.

Rules

Translation rules dictate how the source is translated into the target. A rule can be as simple as a string defining the source key(s) or an object describing a more complex rule. Rules can be defined with the following properties:

source

source describes the key, or set of keys to match for this particular rule. source can be in the following formats:

• {String} The name of the key to match from the source object
• {String} A regular expression that will match one or more keys from the source object
• {String} A dot notation expression (ie: 'pageInfo.count' ) that will be used to do a deep match on one key from the source object

If source is given by itself in the translation rule, the names of the matching keys will also be the names of target keys. If the translation rule only contains a source property, then rule can just be a string that represents the source. For example, the following two rules are the same:

[
    'hair_.*',
    { source: 'hair_.*' }
]

target

target describes the key, or set of keys to be created in the target object. target can be in the following formats:

• {String} The name of the key to create
• {String} A replacement pattern as described in String.prototype.replace for the second argument newSubStr
• {Array} A collection of rules describing the target translations from the source object.

If the target is not found in the translation rule, the source property will be used.

properties

properties defines the child properties for the target object defined in the rule. properties can be in the following formats:

• {Array} A collection of translation rules that describe the child properties for the current translation rule.

items

items is a collection of translation rules that defines the current target object to be an array of the target object defined by its rules.

filter

filter defines one more filters that are used to modify value(s) matched in a given rule. For example, this simple filter will remove the 3 extra spaces found in the value being transposed to the target object:

filter: { find: '\\s{3}', replace: '' }

And later, if you wanted to add the spaces back (ie: mapping data from a client to a database that required spaces at the beginning of it's data):

filter: { find: '.&', replace: '$&' }

The find and replace properties of a filter are doing a String.prototype.replace under the covers, where find is the first argument and replace is the second, so any valid values for those arguments can be given.