Equivalent of ReplaceAll for Associations?

Question

Is there a nice (built-in) way to apply Replace-style rules to key-value pairs in an association? Something like

SomeFunction[<| "id" -> 3, "freq" -> 4 |>, "freq" -> #freq+1 &]
(* should produce <| "id" -> 3, "freq" -> 5 |> *)

This could also be used to add computed keys, like

SomeFunction[..., "density" -> #mass / #volume &]

This would be really useful when combining with Query and Dataset.

Answer 1

Adding the same key to an Association will replace the previous value, which leads to this solution:

assoc = <| "id" -> 3, "freq" -> 4 |>;
<|#, "freq" -> #freq + 1|> &@assoc
(* <| "id" -> 3, "freq" -> 5 |> *)

The following alternatives also work:

assoc["freq"] = 5
assoc["freq"] = assoc["freq"] + 1
assoc["freq"] += 1

Answer 2

You can use AssociateTo to change an existing Association which is already bound to a variable. The definition of your SomeFunction would then look like the following

SetAttributes[SomeFunction, {HoldFirst}];
SomeFunction[a_, func_] := AssociateTo[a, func[a]]

and you examples work like this

assoc=<|"id"->3,"freq"->4,"mass"->2,"volume"->5|>;
SomeFunction[assoc,"freq"->#freq+1&]
SomeFunction[assoc,"density"->#mass/#volume&]
(* <|id->3,freq->5,mass->2,volume->5|> *)
(* <|id->3,freq->5,mass->2,volume->5,density->2/5|> *)

Answer 3

You can also use KeySelect to operate on keys that meet certain criteria.

assoc = <|"id" -> 3, "freq" -> 4, "fred" -> 2, "geeze" -> 1|>;
endsInD = KeySelect[assoc, StringMatchQ[#, __ ~~ "d"] &]

<|"id" -> 3, "fred" -> 2|>

Merge[
 {assoc, #^2 &@endsInD},
 Last]

<|"id" -> 9, "freq" -> 4, "fred" -> 4, "geeze" -> 1|>