Guard Clauses
A dart port of the excellent C# Guard Clauses package by Ardalis.
A simple extensible package with guard clause extensions.
A guard clause is a software pattern that simplifies complex functions by “failing fast”, checking for invalid inputs up front and immediately failing if any are found.
Usage
void processOrder(Order? order)
{
Guard.against.nullValue(order, 'order');
// process order here
}
// OR
class Order
{
String _name;
int _quantity;
double _max;
double _unitPrice;
Order(String name, int quantity, double max, double unitPrice) {
_name = Guard.against.nullOrWhiteSpace(name);
_quantity = Guard.against.negativeOrZero(quantity);
_max = Guard.against.zero(max);
_unitPrice = Guard.against.negative(unitPrice);
}
}
Supported Guard Clauses
- Guard.against.invalidInput (throws if predicate expression returns false)
- Guard.against.invalidFormat (throws if the input string doesn’t match the provided regex)
- Guard.against.negative (throws if the input is negative)
- Guard.against.negativeOrZero (throws if the input is negative or zero)
- Guard.against.nullValue (throws if input is null)
- Guard.against.nullOrEmpty (throws if string input is null or empty)
- Guard.against.nullOrEmptyCollection (throws if the input collection is null or empty)
- Guard.against.nullOrWhiteSpace (throws if string input is null, empty or whitespace)
- Guard.against.nullOrInvalidInput (throws if input is null, or predicate expression returns false)
- Guard.against.indexOutOfRange (throws if input is not a valid index)
- Guard.against.outOfRangeItems (throws if any values in the input collection are outside the provided range)
- Guard.against.outOfRange (throws if the input collection is outside the provided range)
- Guard.against.zero (throws if number input is zero)
Extending with your own Guard Clauses
To extend by creating your own guard clauses, create a new extension class for Guard
.
extension GuardExtensions on Guard {
/// Throws an ArgumentError if [input] is 'foo'.
/// Returns [input] otherwise.
String foo(String input, {String? name}) {
if (input.toLowerCase()) {
throw ArgumentError.value(input, name);
}
return input;
}
}
// Usage
void sumpin(String otherSumpin) {
Guard.against.foo(otherSumpin);
...
}
References
The references are C#-centric but the concepts apply well.
- Getting Started with Guard Clauses
- How to write clean validation clauses in .NET (Nick Chapsas, YouTube, 9 minutes)
- Guard Clauses (podcast: 7 minutes)
- Guard Clause