Mini-State-Machine

A tiny Finite State Machine

About

State machines are extremely useful pieces of functionality that ensure some state of a custom system. Using state machines (or Finite State Machines) allows you to define states for a system and all possible transitions between those states, ensuring the system follows only a certain amount of paths between states. An attempt to deviate from the allowed paths will always result in an error (as well as the initial state being preserved).

State machines such as this one can help you map out your states and transition pathways:

Such a diagram can easily be modelled as a state machine using this library:

import { createStateMachine } from "mini-state-machine";

createStateMachine({
    initial: "idle",
    transitions: [
        { name: "prepare", from: "idle", to: "hidden" },
        { name: "show", from: "hidden", to: "shown" },
        { name: "hide", from: "shown", to: "hidden" }
    ]
});

Why

Existing solutions were a bit too bloated for my use case - I needed a small and functional state machine with asynchronous transitions. Mini-State-Machine is my take on the bare minimum. If you have suggestions on how I could make it smaller, please create an issue!

Currently the NodeJS version is less than 5kb minified!

Usage

Usage is simple: Create a state machine instance and you're ready to go!

import { createStateMachine } from "mini-state-machine";

const sm = createStateMachine({
    initial: "hidden",
    transitions: [
        { name: "show", from: "hidden", to: "shown" },
        { name: "load", from "shown", to: "loaded" },
        { name: "hide", from: "*", to: "hidden" }
    ]
});

await sm.transition("show");
sm.state; // "shown"

await sm.transition("show"); // Exception: No path for this transition

Event handlers can be attached so each transition can be watched using callbacks. Transitions can be cancelled in the "before" and "leave" callback types by either returning false or throwing an error (or rejecting a Promise).

sm.on("before", "show", () => {
    if (someTest()) {
        // cancel show
        return false;
    }
});

sm.on("leave", "hidden", () => {
    throw new Error("Some error");
    // or
    return Promise.reject(new Error("Some error"));
});

By throwing an error, the original transition() call will be rejected with that error.

The methods off(type, stateOrTransitionName, callback) and once(type, stateOrTransitionName, callback) are also available and function like normal event emitter properties. on() and once also return an Object that contains a remove property method, which removes the listener when called.

You can also listen to all events by using an asterisk:

sm.on("after", "*", event => {
    // 'event' :
    // {
    //     from: "state1",
    //     to: "state2",
    //     transition: "doSomething"
    // }
});

Check out the API documentation for more information.

Checking State

You can check the current state by using sm.state. For convenience you can also use sm.is("someState").

You can also check whether a transition is possible by calling sm.can("show"), or if it is impossible by calling sm.cannot("hide").

History

You can get the entire history of the state machine by calling sm.getHistory(). This method is expensive as it clones (using JSON) the entire history collection before returning it.

Each history item will conform to the following structure:

Property	Type	Description
tsStart	Number	The timestamp at which the transition started.
tsEnd	Number	The timestamp at which the transition ended.
state	String	The state that was set at the end of the transition.
previous	String	The previous state before the transition.
transition	String	The transition name.

Event Lifecycle

The events for a transition occur in the following order:

• before transition (cancelable)
• leave state (cancelable)
• enter state
• after transition

Returning a Promise in any of these delays the transition. The callbacks for before, leave, enter and after events are called serially, which means that a failure or delay in one will affect the following callbacks (a failure meaning that they will not be called at all).

The exact time at which the state is changed is between leave-state and enter-state, and once the enter-state procedure has been started it is already to late to cancel the transition.

Installation

Run the following to install:

npm install mini-state-machine --save

This library supports NodeJS 16 as a minimum compatible version.

This package is in ESM module. It needs to be bundled with a tool like Webpack before being used in the browser.