isArray breaks

[gregwebs]

The constructor of a proxied array does in fact === Array
However, everyone uses toString.apply to determine if an object is an array, and this changes once an object is proxied. I was just looking at the direct proxies ticket and it seems this issue is solved there. Is it possible for us to have a work around until then?

[disnet]

Ha! Yeah, I just ran into this bug too. It causes [].concat(proxiedArray) to give a array of length 1 instead of merging the proxiedArray's elements.

I'm not sure about a workaround yet. Maybe the direct proxy shim fixes the issue? I'll try hacking that into contracts.js and see if that fixes things.

[gregwebs]

was reading this: http://perfectionkills.com/instanceof-considered-harmful-or-how-to-write-a-robust-isarray/
apparently there are issues with checking the constructor in an iframe.
Is it possible for contracts.js to override the toString implementation?

[disnet]

Ugh, and that's a no on the direct proxy shim workaround.

% cat array.js 
require('harmony-reflect');

var arr = Proxy([1,2], {});
console.log([].concat([1,2]))
console.log([].concat(arr))

% node --harmony array.js
[ 1, 2 ]
[ { '0': 1, '1': 2 } ]

[disnet]

Right so the normal way of checking for an array without using the new Array.isArray builtin is:

Object.prototype.toString(arr) === '[object Array]'

So it would be straightforward to just patch Object.prototype.toString. The problem is that the functions we really care about like [].concat don't use toString, rather they consult the internal (c++) representation to decide if it's an array or not. Dito Array.isArray. So no amount of patching will help us there.

Humm...although we could just patch concat and Array.isArray directly to do the right thing by reimplementing their functionality in pure js for proxied arrays (and toString for people using the isArray polyfil).

[gregwebs]

yikes! We already don't care about performance of contracts, so re-implemenation in js is fine if it isn't buggy.

Is it possible for the contracts proxy behavior be modified? So that it does less for arrays and the proxy is added/removed earlier? I don't know if that actually make sense...

[disnet]

Yeah, I think that's probably the best option for now. Just do simple one-time checks when the contract get applied to a value (is the value actually an array, etc.) and don't wrap it. This means we don't get to check array accesses but things actually work.

[disnet]

Ok, contracts are no longer wrapping arrays. New version pushed out to npm too.

Hopefully direct proxies land soon.

[gregwebs]

awesome! I had to turn my contracts off :(
will test soon

[gregwebs]

seems to be working. Thanks!