Coleslaw

Coleslaw is a Domain Specific Language (DSL) and related tools, for designing and creating Models.

Installing

$ npm install coleslaw --save

Usage

This library has 2 main apis:

• Model compilation
• Model building

The compilation step converts your model code into into model definition objects. Next you pass these model definitions into builders.

This library also contains the main Model builder.

Author a model

// example.cls
model Example {
    field auto id eid: string
    field name: string
 
    validate eid: uuid
    validate name: alphanum, required
 
    authorize allow ? update
 
    child tests: Test // 1:Many relationship with the Test model
}
 
module.exports = Example

The coleslaw language inherits from ecmascript 5. Which means that it is ecmascript with the addition of the model statement.

Compile your model

During your build process, or at runtime, you can compile a model into javascript which can then be required or eval'd.

var fs = require('fs')
var path = require('path')
var coleslaw = require('coleslaw')
 
coleslaw.compile(fs.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, 'example.cls'), 'utf8'), (err, code) => {
    if (err) throw err
    eval(code)
})

The resulting code is a plain javascript object representing the model described. This model can be used by various coleslaw builders.

Build your model definitions into Models

The default model builder can be used to generate Model instances from model defintions. Model instances have standard CRUD (create, retrieve, update, delete) functionality.

model Example {
    field value: string
}
 
var ExampleModel = coleslaw.build(Example, options) // Example is the model definition
var instance = new ExampleModel({ value: 'test' })  // from an existing object
instance.set('value', 'success')                    // update a field value
instance.save()                                     // Calls dataAccess.update()

In this case we are using the coleslaw.build example to create a Model type from the Example model definition. Next we can create an instance of ExampleModel and do basic CRUD operations. The model keeps track of the state of the object.

Model features

• fields
• relationships
• validation rules
• authorization rules
• access rules

Model Builders

• coleslaw-gulp
• coleslaw-express
• coleslaw-dynamo
• coleslaw-angular