[web-devel] Type-safe URL handling

[Jeremy Shaw]

On Tue, Mar 16, 2010 at 11:05 PM, Michael Snoyman <michael at snoyman.com>wrote:

>
> My new version has two typeclasses, I'll copy them in their entirety here:
>
> class IsRelPath a where
>     toRelPath :: a -> RelPath
>     fromRelPath :: RelPath -> Maybe a
>
> class IsRelPath (Routes a) => WebPlug a where
>     type Routes a
>     dispatch :: a -> Routes a -> (Routes a -> AbsPath) -> Application
>
> I think we all agree that IsRelPath 1) needs to exist and 2) should be
> called something better than that. I would say that it's useful to have
> dispatch as part of a typeclass, which is what WebPlug now is. What makes
> this typeclass so convenient is that any instance of WebPlug is *self
> contained*. There's no need to keep track of which subapps require which
> arguments.
>
>
I am not really clear wath the benefit for WebPlug is -- it seems to me that
it is just adding more boilerplate..

I added two new modules to URLT, namely URLT.Wai and URLT.Dispatch.

I think implemented your little blog demo twice. Once where I didn't use
dispatch, and once were I did. The code for that is here:

http://src.seereason.com/urlt/WaiExample.hs

It seemed like using dispatch did not get rid of or simplify anything, it
just added more boiler plate, type classes, and used extensions (type
families) that a lot of people don't understand yet.

And instead of writing something short a straigt-forward like:

 handleWai mkAbs fromAbs (mySite now)

I had to write the longer:

 handleWai mkAbs fromAbs (dispatch (SiteArgs (BlogArgs now)))

And on the handler end, it hide useful information in the type signature and
required more constructor matching. Instead of:

myBlog :: UTCTime -> (BlogURL -> String) -> BlogURL -> Application
myBlog now mkAbs BlogHome _request =

I have:

myBlogD :: BlogArgs -> (BlogURL -> String) -> BlogURL -> Application
myBlogD (BlogArgs now) mkAbs BlogHome _request =

In order to know the type of 'now' I have to go look somewhere else. In
'myBlog' it was right there in the type signature.

So, I guess I do not yet see the value of Dispatch. On the plus side, it
doesn't seem like I have to use it if I don't like it. But I am curious if I
am missing something useful here..

One advantage is that I can do:

:info Dispatch

in GHCi, and see all the Dispatch instances that are available. But I'm not
sure that really makes it worth the effort.

- jeremy

p.s. The WaiExample does not use AsURL  / IsRelPath, because that is really
a completely orthogonal issue, and I wanted to cut out anything that was not
relevant.
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