Currying

Currying is an advanced technique of working with functions. It’s used not only in JavaScript, but in other languages as well.

Currying is a transformation of functions that translates a function from callable as f(a, b, c) into callable as f(a)(b)(c).

Currying doesn’t call a function. It just transforms it.

Let’s see an example first, to better understand what we’re talking about, and then practical applications.

We’ll create a helper function curry(f) that performs currying for a two-argument f. In other words, curry(f) for two-argument f(a, b) translates it into a function that runs as f(a)(b):

function curry(f) { // curry(f) does the currying transform
  return function(a) {
    return function(b) {
      return f(a, b);
    };
  };
}

// usage
function sum(a, b) {
  return a + b;
}

let curriedSum = curry(sum);

alert( curriedSum(1)(2) ); // 3

As you can see, the implementation is straightforward: it’s just two wrappers.

• The result of curry(func) is a wrapper function(a).
• When it is called like curriedSum(1), the argument is saved in the Lexical Environment, and a new wrapper is returned function(b).
• Then this wrapper is called with 2 as an argument, and it passes the call to the original sum.

More advanced implementations of currying, such as _.curry from lodash library, return a wrapper that allows a function to be called both normally and partially:

function sum(a, b) {
  return a + b;
}

let curriedSum = _.curry(sum); // using _.curry from lodash library

alert( curriedSum(1, 2) ); // 3, still callable normally
alert( curriedSum(1)(2) ); // 3, called partially

Currying? What for?

To understand the benefits we need a worthy real-life example.

For instance, we have the logging function log(date, importance, message) that formats and outputs the information. In real projects such functions have many useful features like sending logs over the network, here we’ll just use alert:

function log(date, importance, message) {
  alert(`[${date.getHours()}:${date.getMinutes()}] [${importance}] ${message}`);
}

Let’s curry it!

log = _.curry(log);

After that log works normally:

log(new Date(), "DEBUG", "some debug"); // log(a, b, c)

…But also works in the curried form:

log(new Date())("DEBUG")("some debug"); // log(a)(b)(c)

Now we can easily make a convenience function for current logs:

// logNow will be the partial of log with fixed first argument
let logNow = log(new Date());

// use it
logNow("INFO", "message"); // [HH:mm] INFO message

Now logNow is log with fixed first argument, in other words “partially applied function” or “partial” for short.

We can go further and make a convenience function for current debug logs:

let debugNow = logNow("DEBUG");

debugNow("message"); // [HH:mm] DEBUG message

So:

1. We didn’t lose anything after currying: log is still callable normally.
2. We can easily generate partial functions such as for today’s logs.

Advanced curry implementation

In case you’d like to get in to the details, here’s the “advanced” curry implementation for multi-argument functions that we could use above.

It’s pretty short:

function curry(func) {

  return function curried(...args) {
    if (args.length >= func.length) {
      return func.apply(this, args);
    } else {
      return function(...args2) {
        return curried.apply(this, args.concat(args2));
      }
    }
  };

}

Usage examples:

function sum(a, b, c) {
  return a + b + c;
}

let curriedSum = curry(sum);

alert( curriedSum(1, 2, 3) ); // 6, still callable normally
alert( curriedSum(1)(2,3) ); // 6, currying of 1st arg
alert( curriedSum(1)(2)(3) ); // 6, full currying

The new curry may look complicated, but it’s actually easy to understand.

The result of curry(func) call is the wrapper curried that looks like this:

// func is the function to transform
function curried(...args) {
  if (args.length >= func.length) { // (1)
    return func.apply(this, args);
  } else {
    return function(...args2) { // (2)
      return curried.apply(this, args.concat(args2));
    }
  }
};

When we run it, there are two if execution branches:

1. If passed args count is the same or more than the original function has in its definition (func.length) , then just pass the call to it using func.apply.
2. Otherwise, get a partial: we don’t call func just yet. Instead, another wrapper is returned, that will re-apply curried providing previous arguments together with the new ones.

Then, if we call it, again, we’ll get either a new partial (if not enough arguments) or, finally, the result.

Summary

Currying is a transform that makes f(a,b,c) callable as f(a)(b)(c). JavaScript implementations usually both keep the function callable normally and return the partial if the arguments count is not enough.

Currying allows us to easily get partials. As we’ve seen in the logging example, after currying the three argument universal function log(date, importance, message) gives us partials when called with one argument (like log(date)) or two arguments (like log(date, importance)).