__________          _________      ___________       
\______   \_____   /   _____/__.__.\_   _____/ ____  
 |       _/\__  \  \_____  <   |  | |    __)_ /    \ 
 |    |   \ / __ \_/        \___  | |        \   |  \
 |____|_  /(____  /_______  / ____|/_______  /___|  /
        \/      \/        \/\/             \/     \/ 

RaSyEn - Random Syntax Engine v.2.0.2

Rasyen (pronounced /ˈɹeɪzn/ like the dried grape) uses a list of options to select a string randomly from an object or array and a template to do the replacements on. This effectively separates the data from template allowing you to store lists of data and leave the random parsing to a simple template.

Contents:

• Demo
• Documentation
  • Template Syntax
  • Methods
  • Containers and callbacks
  • Filters
• Examples
  • Basic filters
  • Using categories and combining lists
  • Saving or removing a result
  • Category filter
  • All together now
  • The meta filter
  • Custom filters
  • Per list filters
  • Sans-list filters

The most basic usage of RaSyEn could look like this.

Rasyen.list_load("flowers", "violets roses forget-me-nots".split(" "));

alert(Rasyen.parse("Daisy likes %flowers%."));
// → "Daisy likes violets."

And here is an example combining random words to generate a name.

// Load (list name, Array or Object)
Rasyen.lists_load({
    "first" : [
        "Ae","Ara","Bal","Ylla","Zin","Zyl"
    ],
    "second" : [
        "balar","can","yra","zorwyn","zumin"
    ]
});

// Templates use tags like %list-name% to produce random output.
var template = "Your elf name is %first%%second%.";

// Parse the template
var out = Rasyen.parse(template); 
// → "Your elf name is Arayra."

Or consider this other example:

// Load a "story list"
Rasyen.lists_load("story", {
    "name"   : [
        "Ben",
        "Jasper",
        "John"
    ],
    "action" : [
        "was hunting",
        "went fishing",
        "was dozing off",
    ],
    "result" : [
        "when he saw an old abandoned cabin",
        "and then suddenly it all made sense",
        "when he received a mysterious call"
    ]
});

// Parse three tags
var out = Rasyen.parse("%story@name% %story@action% %story@result%.");

The value of out could be...

“Ben went fishing and then suddenly it all made sense."

... Or any number of other combinations.

Demo

You can see RaSyEn in action in the online demo here.

For a more complex demo that uses AJAX and a simple cache system for the lists see this implementation.

Documentation

Here you will find a brief description of all methods, containers, callbacks and filters in RaSyEn.

Template Syntax

Templates are strings fed into the parser, who will look for tags, parts of the string with surrounding percent symbols, and proceed from there. Here is a basic description of a tags symbology.

• % to open and close a tag.
• @ to separate categories.
• | to to merge different lists.
• = to separate different filters.

With that in mind you can create templates with tags such as:

%list%

That returns a random string from list, or you can modify the output using a filter named filter, like this:

%list=filter%.

Easy-peasy. You could also descend into a category of the list and then modify the result with a filter:

%list@category=filter%.

What if you want a random result from two lists? Try this:

%list-a|list-b%.

... Or combine list-a with a category from list-b and then pass the result through filter-1 and filter-2.

%list-a|list-b@category=filter-1=filter-2%.

It gets better, you can save a category name and apply it to another list, or you can create lists which contain templates to further randomize things.

Methods

The methods built in Rasyen are:

• Rasyen.random_range(min, max)
  • Will use a cryptographic strength method to pick a number between min and max
• Rasyen.rai(array)
  • Will choose a random array item
• Rasyen.roi(object)
  • Will choose a random object item
• Rasyen.rok(object)
  • Will choose a random object key
• Rasyen.random_str(object_or_array)
  • Will recursively select random items until it encounters a string
• Rasyen.navigate_obj(object, array)
  • Will use the array as the keys to find an item in the object
• Rasyen.extend_obj(old_obj, new_obj, newer_obj, etc)
  • Will recursively “deep merge” the objects that are passed to it
• Rasyen.replace_in_obj(old_obj, replace_arr, path_arr)
  • Will take any object and replace an array determined by the path array
• Rasyen.list_save_item(result, name)
  • Saves the result in a temporary list with the specified name
• Rasyen.list_remove_item(name, str, path_array)
  • Removes an item from a list temporarily
• Rasyen.list_load(name, object_or_array)
  • Loads a list with a given name
• Rasyen.lists_load(object_of_lists)
  • Loads an object where each key is the list name, and its value is the list data
• Rasyen.list_remove(name)
  • Removes a loaded list
• Rasyen.list_get(name)
  • Will return the list of a name or false if it is not loaded
• Rasyen.parse_tag(string)
  • Parses a single %tag% from a template and returns an object
• Rasyen.parse_template(string)
  • Parses a single template with %tags% in it and returns an object
• Rasyen.parse(string)
  • The main parse method, will accept a string and return a string with the changed values if any

There are actually more public methods in Rasyen, but these are the methods most people will use.

Containers and Callbacks

RaSyEn contains several containers you can access directly if needed:

• Rasyen.lists object
  • Is the JavaScript Object where the loaded lists (with the list_load() method) are stored.
• Rasyen.filters object
  • Is the object containing available filters such as =to-lower, =a-or-an, etc.
• Rasyen.saved_keys array
  • The saved results from the =save-result filter are saved in this array.
• Rasyen.removed_items array
  • The items removed from lists by the =remove-result filter are saved here.
• Rasyen.options object
  • The options container, as RaSyEn grows it will prove its worth.
    • Rasyen.options.max_recusrion number
      • Limits the amount of recursion to 10 when using the meta filter.
    • Rasyen.options.use_window_crypto boolean
      • Defaults to true. If false it force the use of Math.random() instead.

You can also use these callback functions to edit core functionalities.

• Rasyen.callback object
  • Is an object containing callbacks for the parse methods, to make it possible to add custom code to parsing these are:
    • Rasyen.callback.parse_template(data) function
      • Called once when a template is parsed. Must always return the passed data.
    • Rasyen.callback.parse_tag(data) function
      • Called when a tag in a template is processed. Must always return the passed data.
    • Rasyen.callback.parse_list(data) function
      • Called at the end of every list parsed. Must always return the passed data.
    • Rasyen.callback.parse_filters(data) function
      • Called at the end of every filter. Must always return the passed data.
    • Rasyen.callback.on_error(error) function
      • Called when an error is produced to enable elegant error handling.

Filters

Filters are an expansible tool that can be used inside the template tags to do something with the output.

Pre-built filters are:

• =to-lower
  • Sets the selected text to lower case.
• =to-upper
  • Sets the selected text to upper case.
• =first-to-lower
  • Sets the first letter of the selected text to lower case.
• =first-to-upper
  • Sets the first letter of the selected text to upper case.
• =words
  • By itself does nothing, but is intended to be used with other filters, that then apply to each word of the result.
• =random-category
  • If the list (javascript object) has keys (properties) it will select one at random if not it will return a string (if any).
• =range
  • Will return a random number between the range specified.
• =save-result
  • Allows saving the result to a key (see example below) for later usage.
• =category
  • Meant to be used with the save-result filter. Allows using a saved variable as list key (see the example).
• =remove-result
  • Will remove the result from the list to it cannot appear again in other tag calls.
• =meta
  • Evaluates the tag again to check for more tags in the result string.
• =inline
  • Will attempt to parse any JSON set before it and return a random result. It can also save the parsed JSON to a list if a second argument is provided.
• =quiet
  • Will quietly parse any filters before, but not output anything on the template.

English Filters:

These filters are located in the filters/en_US-filters.js file. It is not included by default.

• =a-or-an
  • Will prefix the word with “a” or “an” depending on the selected texts starting letter.
• =pronoun-swap
  • Searches the result for a pronoun and replaces all the occurrences in the result with the same gender.
• =to-plural
  • Converts a word to plural.
• =to-singular
  • Converts a word to singular.
• =number-to-words
  • Converts a number from digits to its word representation.

There is an ever-growing test file where you can see every filter in action.

Examples:

You can use filters on lists to do a specific thing with the randomly returned result.

Basic filters

A filter is usually prefixed by a list name it applies to, so if your list is named “fruit” containing a single item “banana", its tag in the template would be “%fruit%", and to apply the “=to-upper” filter you would add it to the tag resulting in %fruit=to-upper% which would produce “BANANA".

// Add a list called "insect"

Rasyen.list_load("insect", [
    "MOTH",
    "MANTIS"
]);

// Parse

var template = "%insect=first-to-upper% and %insect=to-lower%.";
var out =  Rasyen.parse(template);
// → "Moth and moth."

// Combining filters

out = Rasyen.parse("%insect=to-lower=first-to-upper%.");
// → "Mantis." || "Moth."

Remember, filter order matters and they will be applied from left to right, so:

// Load a list called "title" with two items

Rasyen.list_load("title", [
    "Mrs",
    "Miss"
]);

var out = Rasyen.parse("%title=to-lower=to-upper% Parker");
// → "MISS Parker" || "MRS Parker"

Or use filters to do grammatical prefixing:

// Load a list called "animal"

Rasyen.list_load("animal", [
    "tiger",
    "ostrich"
]);

// Parse 

var out = Rasyen.parse("%animal=a-or-an%"); // → "a tiger" or "an ostrich"

Some filters accept parameters or even use other filters, like =words:

// Load a list called "animal"

Rasyen.list_load("kung-fu", [
    "angry tiger style",
    "spinning ostrich kick"
]);

var out = Rasyen.parse("%kung-fu=words=first-to-upper%"); //  → "Angry Tiger Style" ...

Using Categories and Combining Lists

Complex lists can be accessed by use of categories, (the object property name) prefixed with the @ character.

And lists can be combined in the same tag by using the | symbol and filtered with built in or custom filters.

// Load lists as json object
Rasyen.lists_load({
    
    // The "adjective" list contains categories "good" and "bad"
    "adjective" : {
        "good" : [
            "happy",
            "calm",
            "nice"
        ],
        "bad"  : [
            "lazy",
            "tired"
        ]
    },

    // The "name" list
    "name" : {
        "male"  : {
            "hobbit" : [
                "Bilbo",
                "Frodo",
                "Sam"
            ],
            "other"  : [
                "Gandalf",
                "Tom Bombadil",
                "Aragorn"
            ]
        },
        "female" : [
            "Galadriel",
            "Goldberry"
        ]
    }
});

// Parse
var template = "%name@male% was feeling %adjective%.";
var out = Rasyen.parse(template);
// → "Gandalf was feeling happy." || "Tom Bombadil was feeling lazy." || ...

// Combine male hobbit names and female using the "|" pipe character

out = Rasyen.parse("%name@male@hobbit|name@female% feels %adjective@good%.");

Saving or Removing a Result

The =save-result and =remove-result let you save and remove an item from a list, let say you are making a plot, you can save the name of your character and use it later again, or you can remove an item from a list so the template will never use the item twice.

// We add our lists
Rasyen.lists_load({
    "feeling" : [
        "sad",
        "happy"
    ],
    "title" : [
        "she",
        "he"
    ]
});

// Save title to "t1" and feeling to "f1" and use them later

var template = "%title=save-result=t1% was %feeling=save-result=f1%, %t1% was always %f1%";
var out      =  Rasyen.parse(template);
// → "she was sad, she was always sad"


// You can also remove items so they don't show up twice

template = "%title=remove-result% knew %title% would do it";
out = Rasyen.parse(template);
// → "she knew he would do it"

// Or mix two lists and save the result
template = "%feeling|title|=save-result=new-result% is %new-result%.";

out = Rasyen.parse(template);
// → "sad is sad." || "she is she" || ...

Category Filter

The property name in a javascript object is used as a category in RaSyEn. You can use =random-category to get a category as a result and apply it using the =category filter.

// Load the "object" list with categories by room

Rasyen.list_load("house", {
    "lounge" : [
        "radio",
        "lamp"
    ],
    "kitchen"  : [
        "toaster",
        "microwave"
    ]
});

// Parse

var template = [
    "In the %house=random-category=save-result=room%",
    "there was a brave little %house=category=room%"
];

var out = Rasyen.parse(template.join(" "));
// → "In the kitchen there was a brave little toaster" || ...

In the example above by saving the category name you can use it to select the pertinent list item further down the road.

All together now

Here is an advanced example that tries to show how powerful these filters can be, lets say we want to produce a story where we can keep track of a set of characters, and use them later on in the same template. For example to produce a text similar to this.

“He, Lancelot loveth she, Guinevere, but Guinevere loveth Arthur. Lancelot grew jealous of Arthur, and plotted with Morgana to forsake him."

We would have to do:

// Some basic syntax lists
Rasyen.lists_load({
    "title" : [
        "he",
        "she"
    ],
    "preposition" : {
        "he" : "him",
        "she" : "her"
    },
    "name" : {
        "he" : [
            "Lancelot",
            "Arthur",
            "Tam Lin"
        ],
        "she" : [
            "Guinevere",
            "Morgana",
            "Janet"
        ]
    }
});

// Now the template...

var template = [
    "%title=remove-result=save-result=t1=first-to-upper%,",
    // → "He,"

    "%name=category=t1=remove-result=save-result=n1%",
    // → "Lancelot"

    "loveth %title=remove-result=save-result=t2%,",
    // → "loveth she,"

    "%name=category=t2=remove-result=save-result=n2%,",
    // → "Guinevere,"

    "but %n2% loveth %name=category=t1=save-result=n3%.",
    // → "but Guinevere loveth Arthur."

    "%n1% grew jealous of %n3%,",
    // → "Lancelot grew jealous of Arthur,"

    "and plotted with %name=category=t2=save-result=n4%",
    // → "and plotted with Morgana"

    "to forsake %preposition=category=t1%."
    // → "to forsake him."
];

// Parse

var out = Rasyen.parse(template.join(" "));

In essence you now have four characters n1, n2, n3 and n4, which you can use to add continuity to the narration. n1 and n3 are the same gender, and n2 and n4 are plotting against n1

The Meta Filter

What if you want to use lists in your lists?

The =meta filter can be useful for making combined syntax.

// Load (list name, Array or Object)
Rasyen.list_load("elf", {
    "a" : [
        "Ae",
        "Ara",
        "Bal",
        "Ylla",
        "Zin",
        "Zyl"
    ],
    "b" : [
        "balar",
        "can",
        "yra",
        "zorwyn",
        "zumin"
    ],
    "name" : "%elf@a%%elf@b%" // For use with the =meta filter
});

var template = "Your elf name is %elf@name=meta%."; 
// → "Your elf name is Arayra."

// Or store the name as %elf-name%
template = "This elf is called %elf@name=meta=save-result=elf-name%.";

var out = Rasyen.parse(template);
// → "This elf is called Arayra."

This looks like the first example, with a key difference, now that you are using only one tag you can save it using the =save-result filter.

Custom Filters

Another cool thing are custom filters, which can be built easily enough using the following technique.

// Load a list called happy

Rasyen.list_load("happy", [
    "happy",
    "joyful",
    "gay"
]);

// The %happy=smile% filter adds a smile to the selected word.

Rasyen.filters['smile'] = function(list){
    list.replace = list.replace+' ^_^';
    return list;
};
var out = Rasyen.parse("be %happy=smile%");

Per List Filters

Or if you want to always filter a list you can just name the filter the same way as the list and it will be done automatically.

// Add a list with a strange layout
Rasyen.list_load("color", { 
    "crayola" : [
        ["almond", "#efdecd"], 
        ["antique brass", "#cd9575"], 
        ["apricot", "#fdd9b5"]
    ]
});

// Always filter this list in the following way:
Rasyen.filters['color'] = function(list){
    if(typeof Rasyen.lists['color'] !== 'undefined'){
        // Get the full list apply categories and select an array
        var color_list = Rasyen.lists['color'];
        var color_cat    = Rasyen.roi(color_list);
        
        if(list.categories){
            // search color_list with list.categories for the color category
            color_cat = Rasyen.navigate_obj(color_list, list.categories);
        }
        
        // Get a random array item from color_cat
        var col = Rasyen.rai(color_cat);
        
        // Add the color to the word.
        list.replace = '<span style="color:'+col[1]+'">'+col[0]+'</span>';
    }
    return list;
};

// Now every time this list is called the function above will run.
var out = Rasyen.parse("%color%");

Sans-list Filters

Filters don't necessarily have to come after a list name, you can also have a tag with a filter and no list. For example:

// A filter to include a smile

Rasyen.filters['smile'] = function(list){
    list.replace = '^_^';
    return list;
};

// And then:

var out = Rasyen.parse("%=smile% a wild smile appears!");
// → "^_^ a wild smile appears!"

Callbacks

Callbacks allow you to manipulate information in different parts of the parsing process. The callback functions are also extremely useful when debugging.

Rasyen.callback.parse_tag = function(parsed){
    // For debugging
    console.log(parsed);
    return parsed;
};

Want more?

Check out these projects that use RaSyEn:

• RaSyEn demo tries to reproduce all of RaSyEn's features in a simple fashion.
• The RPG inspiration generator uses AJAX loaded lists to produce fantasy and sci-fi snippets.