Sugar

A Javascript library for working with native objects.

• Install
• Upgrading
• Getting Started
• Documentation
• Custom Builds
• Browser
• npm
• Modules
• Date Locales
• Timezones
• Defining Methods
• Plugins
• Contributing
• Road Map

v2.0.4

sugar.js | sugar.min.js (24kb gz)

Install

npm install sugar

bower install sugar

Upgrading

If you are upgrading from v1, there is now an upgrade helper script available that makes upgrading easier by warning you about breaking changes as your code is run. The CAUTIONLOG is also available, which is a vetted changelog showing breaking changes in order of severity.

Getting Started

https://sugarjs.com/quickstart/

Documentation

https://sugarjs.com/docs/

Custom Builds

https://sugarjs.com/download/

Custom browser builds can be created on the site download page. In addition, tools like Browserify can also be used to create custom builds, as npm packages are now fully modular. The main repo also has tasks to create custom builds as well. Simply clone, run npm install then gulp.

Browser

The dist directory holds builds that are ready to be loaded in the browser. These builds include the core module, and so have no dependencies. Bower packages at the moment include only this directory. Use the es5 builds if you require support for environments that do not support ES5 natively (IE8 and below).

npm

The sugar npm package allows methods as well as entire modules to be required individually. If you are using a build tool like Browserify, this will make it simple to create smaller custom builds without going through the download page. All packages also include pre-built distributions in the dist/ directory.

In addition to the main sugar package, there are also packages separated by Sugar module, i.e. sugar-date, sugar-array, etc.

When an entry point is required (the package name or an entire module), it will return a reference to Sugar, which is equivalent to the global object in the browser. All methods will be defined on this object and can be called as normal. Requiring an individual method will define it on Sugar and additionally return a reference to its static form that can be called immediately:

// Require all modules
var Sugar = require('sugar');
Sugar.Number.round(3.1415);

// Require the Number module
var Sugar = require('sugar/number');
Sugar.Number.round(3.1415);

// Require only the "round" method
var round = require('sugar/number/round');
round(3.1415);

As the npm package is designed with node in mind, polyfills must be explicitly required (the sugar entry point will not include them), and will immediately apply themselves if the methods they polyfill are missing.

// Require and apply ES6 polyfills
require('sugar/polyfills/es6');

Similarly, date locales must be explicitly required as well:

// Require the Japanese date locale
require('sugar/locales/ja');
// Require all date locales
require('sugar/locales');

All Sugar npm packages are dependent on the sugar-core package.

Modules

Although Sugar builds can now be customized at method level, modules are still used as an intuitive way of grouping similar methods. Sugar npm packages make use of modules, both in the main sugar package as well as individual module packages beginning with sugar-. The following modules are available:

Default:

• ES6 (Polyfills)
• ES7 (Polyfills)
• Array
• Date
• Enumerable (shared methods on Array and Object)
• Function
• Number
• Object
• Range (String, Number, and Date ranges)
• RegExp
• String

Non-default:

• ES5 (Polyfills, adds IE6-8 Support)
• Language (Character conversion and script detection)
• Inflections (Pluralization and string normalization)

Non-default modules are excluded from the main Sugar build, but can be added by creating a custom build. The main npm package includes the ES5 module, polyfills are disabled by default and must be explicitly required. Other non-default modules can be found individually (i.e. sugar-language, etc).

Date Locales

Locale definition files are in the locales directory. They can be simply included as-is after Sugar is loaded, or built together using custom builds. English is included by default and required by the Date module. Currently available locales are:

• Catalan (ca)
• Danish (da)
• Dutch (nl)
• Finnish (fi)
• French (fr)
• German (de)
• Italian (it)
• Japanese (ja)
• Korean (ko)
• Norwegian (no)
• Polish (pl)
• Portuguese (pt)
• Russian (ru)
• Spanish (es)
• Swedish (sv)
• Simplified Chinese (zh-CN)
• Traditional Chinese (zh-TW)

Adding/Customizing Locales

If a locale or format is missing, it can easily be added by modifying or adding the definition. See here for more on this. Please consider contributing any changes made back to the community!

Timezones

Sugar does not deal with timezone abbreviations (i.e. "PST", etc). Timezone offsets will be correctly parsed if they are in ISO-8601 format (+09:00, +0900, or Z for UTC), however if an abbreviation exists it will be ignored. Sugar however plays nicely with other libraries that offer full timezone support such as timezone.js.

Date.create allows two options for dealing with UTC dates. fromUTC will parse the string as UTC, but return a normal date. In contrast, setUTC tells Sugar to use methods like getUTCHours when handling the date, and is usually used when the date needs to be formatted as UTC. Native methods like getHours still return local values.

Defining Methods

Sugar now makes it easy to define your own methods. This is aimed at developers hoping to release their own plugins with Sugar. After defining methods, they can be extended or used as chainables just like other methods:

Sugar.Number.defineStatic('randomish', function () {
  if (Math.random() > .5) {
    return Math.random();
  } else {
    return 1;
  }
});

Sugar.Number.defineInstance({
  'square': function (n) {
    return n * n;
  },
  'cube': function (n) {
    return n * n * n;
  }
});

Sugar.Number.square(3);         // 9
new Sugar.Number(5).cube().raw; // 125
Sugar.Number.randomish()        // ???

Sugar.extend();
(2).square();       // 4
(4).cube();         // 64
Number.randomish(); // ???

See the docs for options and other helpers.

Plugins

If you are defining methods that are useful to the general public, please consider releasing them as a Sugar plugin! Refer to the plugin boilerplate repo for an example to get started.

Contributing

If you would like to issue a pull request, please first consider adding well formed unit tests. These tests can be run directly in the browser from the test/browser/ directory or in node with npm test.

Road Map

Proposals for core features or major method changes will be added to the road map. New methods may or may not be accepted, depending on their utility. Generally, they will first be delegated to plugins that may eventually be added to the main library when they reach a certain stage of popularity.