Our covers a lot of cool libraries you can use when making a web app. But one thing we haven’t covered yet on this blog is using Haskell for front-end web development. There are many libraries and frameworks out there. and come to mind. Another option is which uses GHCJS under the hood. Haskell Web Series Yesod Snap Reflex FRP But for this new series I’ve decided to take a different approach. For the next few weeks we’re going to be looking at ! Elm I love Elm for a few reasons. Elm builds on my strong belief that we can take the principles of functional programming and put them to practical use. The language is no-nonsense and the documentation is quite good. Elm has a few syntactic quirks . It also lacks a few key Haskell features. And yet, we can still do a lot with it. This week we’ll look at basic installation, differences, and usage. Next week, we’ll compose a simple Todo application in Elm. This will give us a feel for how we architect our Elm applications. We’ll wrap up by exploring how to add more effects to our app, and how to integrate Elm types with Haskell. Front-end is, of course, only part of the story. To learn more about using Haskell for backend web, check out our ! You can also download our for more ideas! Haskell Web Series Production Checklist Basic Setup As with any language, there will be some setup involved in getting Elm onto our machine for the first time. For Windows and Mac, you can run the installer program provided . There are separate instructions for Linux, but they’re straightforward enough. You fetch the binary, it, and move to your . here tar bin Once we have the executable installed, we can get going. When you've used enough package management programs, the process gets easier to understand. The command has a few fundamental things in common with and . elm elm stack npm First, we can run to create a new project. This will make a folder for us as well as an file. This JSON file is comparable to a file or for Node.js. It's where we'll specify all our different package dependencies. The default version of this will provide most of your basic web packages. Then we'll make our source files in . elm init src elm.json .cabal package.json .elm /src Running a Basic Page Elm development looks different from most normal Javascript systems I’ve worked with. While we’re writing our code, we don’t need to specify a specific entry point to our application. Every file we make is a potential web page we can view. So here’s how we can start off with the simplest possible application: import Browserimport HTML exposing (Html, div, text) type Message = Message main : Program () Int Messagemain = Browser.sandbox { init = 0, update = update, view = view } update : Message -> Int -> Intupdate _ x = x view : Int -> Html Messageview _ = div [] [text "Hello World!"] Elm uses a model/view/controller system. We define our program in the function. Our type has three parameters. The first relates to flags we can pass to our program. We'll ignore those for now. The second is the model type for our program. We'll start with a simple integer. Then the final type is a message. Our view will cause updates by sending messages of this type. The function means our program is simple, and has no side effects. Aside from passing an initial state, we also pass an function and a function. main Program sandbox update view The function allows us to take a new message and change our model if necessary. Then the is a function that takes our model and determines the HTML components. You can read the type of as "an HTML component that sends messages of type . update view view Message We can run the command and point our browser at . This takes us to a dashboard where we can examine any file we want. We'll only want to look at the ones with a function. Then we'll see our simple page with the div on the screen. (It strangely spins if we select a pure library file). elm-reactor localhost:8000 main As per the we can make this more interesting by using the in our model. We'll change our type so that it can either represent an or a . Then our update function will change the model based on the message. Elm tutorial Int Message Increment Decrement type Message = Increment | Decrement update : Message -> Int -> Intupdate msg model = case msg of Increment -> model + 1 Decrement -> model - 1 view : Int -> Html Messageview model = div [] [String.fromInt model] As a last change, we’ll add and buttons to our interface. These will allow us to send the and messages to our type. + - Increment Decrement view model = div [] [ button [onClick Decrement] [text "-"] , div [] [ text (String.fromInt model) ] , button [onClick Increment] [text "+"] ] Now we have an interface where we can press each button and the number on the screen will change! That’s our basic application! The Make Command The command builds up a dummy interface for us to use and examine our pages. But our ultimate goal is to make it so we can generate HTML and Javascript from our elm code. We would then export these assets so our back-end could serve them as resources. We can do this with the command. Here's a sample: elm reactor elm make elm make Main.elm --output=main.html We’ll want to use scripting to pull all these elements together and dump them in an assets folder. We’ll get some experience with this in a couple weeks when we put together a full Elm + Haskell project. Differences from Haskell There are a few syntactic gotchas when comparing Elm to Haskell. We won’t cover them all, but here are the basics. We can already see that import and module syntax is a little different. We use the keyword in an import definition to pick out specific expressions we want from that module. exposing import HTML exposing (Html, div, text) import Types exposing (Message(..)) When we define our own module, we will also use the keyword in place of in the module definition: exposing where module Types exposing (Message(..)) type Message = Increment | Decrement We can also see that Elm uses where we would use in Haskell. If we want a type synonym, Elm offers the combination: type data type alias type alias Count = Int As you can see from the type operators above, Elm reverses the operator and . A single colon refers to a type signature. Double colons refer to list appending: : :: myNumber : IntmyNumber = 5 myList : [Int]myList = 5 :: [2, 3] Elm is also missing some of the nicer syntax elements of Haskell. For instance, Elm lacks pattern matching on functions and guards. Elm also does not have clauses. Only and statements exist. And instead of the operator for function composition, you would use . data-preserve-html-node="true" Here are a few examples of these points: where case let . << isBigNumber : Int -> BoolisBigNumber x = let forComparison = 5 in x > forComparison findSmallNumbers : List Int -> List IntfindSmallNumbers numbers = List.filter (not << isBigNumber) numbers As a last note in this section, Elm is strictly evaluated. Elm compiles to Javascript so it can run in browsers. And it’s much easier to generate sensible Javascript with a strict language. Elm Records Another key difference with Elm is how record syntax works. It Elm, a “record” is a specific type. These simulation Javascript objects. In this example, we define a type synonym for a record. While we don’t have pattern matching in general, we can use pattern matching on records: type alias Point2D = { x: Float , y: Float } sumOfPoint : Point2D -> FloatsumOfPoint {x, y} = x + y To make our code feel more like Javascript, we can use the operator to access records in different ways. We can either use the Javascript like syntax, or use the period and our field name as a normal function. . point1 : Point2Dpoint1 = {x = 5.0, y = 6.0} p1x : Floatp1x = point1.x p1y : Floatp1y = .y point1 We can also update particular fields of records with ease. This approach scales well to many fields: newPoint : Point2DnewPoint = { point1 | y = 3.0 } Typeclasses and Monads The more controversial differences between Haskell and Elm lie with these two concepts. Elm does not have typeclasses. For a Haskell veteran such as myself, this is a big restriction. Because of this, Elm also lacks syntax. Remember that syntax relies upon the idea that the typeclass exists. do do Monad There is a reason for these omissions though. The Elm creator wrote an about it. interesting article His main point is that (unlike me), most Elm users are coming from Javascript rather than Haskell. They tend not to have much background with functional programming and related concepts. So it’s not as big a priority for Elm to capture these constructs. So what alternatives are available? Well when it comes to typeclasses, each type has to come up with its own definition for a function. Let’s take the simple example of . In Haskell, we have the function. It allows us to apply a function over a container, without knowing what the container is: map fmap fmap :: (Functor f) => (a -> b) -> f a -> f b We can apply this same function whether we have a list or a dictionary. In Elm though, each library has its own function. So we have to qualify the usage of it: map import Listimport Dict double : List Int -> List Intdouble l = List.map (* 2) l doubleDict : Dict String Int -> Dict String IntdoubleDict d = Dict.map (* 2) d Instead of monads, Elm uses a function called . This acts a lot like Haskell's operator. We see this pattern more often in object oriented languages like Java. As an example from the documentation, we can see how this works with . andThen >>= Maybe toInt : String -> Maybe Int toValidMonth : Int -> Maybe InttoValidMonth month = if month >= 1 && month <= 12 then Just month else Nothing toMonth : String -> Maybe InttoMonth rawString = toInt rawString `andThen` toValidMonth So Elm doesn’t give us quite as much functional power as we have in Haskell. That said, Elm is a front-end language first. It expresses how to display our data and how we bring components together. If we need complex functional elements, we can use Haskell and put that on the back-end. Conclusion We’ll stop there for now. Next week we’ll expand our understanding of Elm by writing a more complicated program. We’ll write a simple Todo list application and see Elm’s architecture in action. To hear more from Monday Morning Haskell, make sure to to our newsletter! That will also give you access to our awesome page! Subscribe Resources
![Comparing the Best TypeScript Alternatives [Part I]](https://hackernoon.imgix.net/images/XIlys8PrM8eJ7n0qjETjuC0lbkB2-dze3qzq.jpeg?auto=format&fit=max&w=3840)
