Depth-First

JavaScript for Cheminformatics - Atom Typing with Prototype and Iterators

By Richard L. Apodaca

The previous article in this series discussed the use of Prototype to build a simple cheminformatics model. But there's much more to Prototype than an improved class-like syntax. This article discusses one specific way that Prototype enhances JavaScript collections through iterators.

The Problem

Let's say we have an instance of Molecule, as defined in the previous article, and we'd like to group the carbon atoms separately from the heteroatoms. In many languages, including Java, we'd have to write a for-loop complete with logic for comparing atoms and then placing them into bins. Prototype makes possible a more modular approach with iterators.

Functional Programming and Iterators

JavaScript is a multi-paradigm programming language that offers tools for both object-oriented and functional programming approaches. In practical terms, this simply means that even functions in JavaScript behave as objects: they can be created dynamically and passed as parameters. Prototype takes advantage of this to extend collections instances such as Arrays with built-in iterators that are analogous to iterators found in languages such as Ruby.

A Simple Test

The JavaScript below builds a pyridine molecule:

function createPyridine(){
  var pyridine = new Molecule();
  var c1 = pyridine.addAtom("C");
  var c2 = pyridine.addAtom("C");
  var c3 = pyridine.addAtom("C");
  var c4 = pyridine.addAtom("C");
  var c5 = pyridine.addAtom("C");
  var n6 = pyridine.addAtom("N");

  pyridine.connect(c1, c2, 1);
  pyridine.connect(c2, c3, 2);
  pyridine.connect(c3, c4, 1);
  pyridine.connect(c4, c5, 2);
  pyridine.connect(c5, n6, 1);
  pyridine.connect(n6, c1, 2);

  return pyridine;
}

Saving this code in a file called molecules.js, we can use Firefox with Firebug to test it with the following HTML:

<html>
  <head>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="prototype.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="chem.js"></script>
    <script type="text/javascript" src="molecules.js"></script>
  </head>
  <body></body>
</html>

With the Firebug console, we create a Molecule of pyridine:

>>> m = createPyridine();

To separate carbons from heteroatoms, we use the Prototype partition iterator:

>>> m=createPyridine();
Object atoms=[6] bonds=[6]
>>> m.atoms.partition(function(atom){return atom.label == "C"});
[[Object label=C neighbors=[2] bonds=[2], Object label=C neighbors=[2] bonds=[2], Object label=C neighbors=[2] bonds=[2], 2 more...], [Object label=N neighbors=[2] bonds=[2]]]

The partition iterator accepts a function as a parameter and returns an array containing two sub-arrays: the first contains the elements for which the function evaluated to true (carbons) and the second contains the elements for which the function evaluated to false (heteroatoms).

Conclusions

Although the example shown here is rather simple, it's possible to extend the general principle to more complex atom typing systems. By creating a single function that evaluated atom type, we could pass it as a parameter to any number of collection iterator functions.