Coffeescript and Angular

+Eamonn O'Connell  has a nice post on using Coffescript and Angular on his blog here.

One of the things I like about Coffee is the elegance of its syntax. But it feels like you're not using the power of the language when you convert something like this, in the original javascript:

function PhoneListCtrl($scope) {
  $scope.phones = [
    {"name": "Nexus S",
     "snippet": "Fast just got faster with Nexus S."},
    {"name": "Motorola XOOM™ with Wi-Fi",
     "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."},
    {"name": "MOTOROLA XOOM™",
     "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."}
  ];
}

to this in cofee:

PhoneListCtrl = ($scope) ->
  $scope.phones = [
    {"name": "Nexus S",
     "snippet": "Fast just got faster with Nexus S."},
    {"name": "Motorola XOOM™ with Wi-Fi",
     "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."},
    {"name": "MOTOROLA XOOM™",
     "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."}
  ]

Okay, you lost the word function. But is that all?

Building on his example I came up with these alternatives. You can define the structure this way:

 $scope.phones  = namelist
  "Nexus S":
     "snippet": "Fast just got faster with Nexus S."
  "Motorola XOOM™ with Wi-Fi":
     "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."
  "MOTOROLA XOOM™":
     "snippet": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."

The syntax relies on a function, namelist, which I'll define below. Namelist helps make the syntax coffee-er.

Here's namelist:

namelist = (entries) ->  for key, value of entries 
      entry = value;  entry['name'] = key; entry

That can be refactored for more general use this way

namelist = (entries) -> attrlist 'name', entries

/* Where attrlist is */

attrlist = (attr, entries) ->   for key, value of entries
   entry = value;  entry[attr] = key;  entry

A better way might be to construct the data like this:

phones  = phonelist
  "Nexus S": "Fast just got faster with Nexus S."
  "Motorola XOOM™ with Wi-Fi": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."
  "MOTOROLA XOOM™": "The Next, Next Generation tablet."

And define phonelist this way:

phonelist = (entries) -> for name, snippet of entries
     v = {}; v['name'] = name; v['snippet'] = snippet; v

This could likewise be generalized. But I'll stop here.