[web-devel] Rich Internet Applications using Haskell

[Jeremy Shaw]

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 1:12 AM, Bardur Arantsson <spam at scientician.net>wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I just though I'd let y'all know that I've started work on "Dingo", a small
> framework for creating Rich Internet Applications (RIA) in Haskell. The
> basic idea is that you write Haskell code and the framework generates all
> the browser-related bits you need (HTML, JS, state serialization, etc.) at
> runtime.
>
> Writing an application is centered around Widgets and Events which are just
> what you'd expect if you were writing a Gtk+/Swing/SWT/Qt application. The
> way the application starts is that you provide a "start the application"
> callback to a "runServer" function. When a client connects to the server the
> first time, the "main" callback gets run and can set up the main application
> widget however it wants.
>

Awesome! I worked on something similar. It's a very interesting and
challenging problem. I wish I had more time to work on it. But at the very
least, I can try to support your efforts :)


> The current status is basically:
>
>   * Uses Happstack-server for serving HTTP. Given Dingo's extremely simple
> serving needs it may be a bit of a "heavy" dependency, but it works for now
> and it's not really a high priority to change this. It's also definitely NOT
> eye-gouging-inducing, so that's a plus :).
>

Yeah. I think ultimately you end up needing all the other high-level stuff
something like happstack offers anyway.


> Immediate plans:
>
>   * Find a better way to handle state transfer to lessen the burden of
> having to write JSON <-> JS and JSON <-> server-state translations by hand.
> I'm thinking that some of the ideas from the "Invertible Syntax" paper (
> http://www.informatik.uni-marburg.de/~rendel/unparse/rendel10invertible.pdf) may apply for this. Text.JSON.Generic may also be workable, but I had some
> trouble getting it to work with Text values and it doesn't help with
> generating the widget-specific JavaScript.
>


Yeah, I ran into this type of problem as well. I have used the 'json'
library and the 'RJson' library. Using generics is nice because it seems
like you don't have to write anything on the server-side. But that can mean
that the javascript side is really ugly. At first it seems like you are
going to be able to get away with just one type that you define in Haskell
which gets automatically converted to JSON (via generics or Template
Haskell), and then the JSON gets automatically converted to a javascript
object. But in my experience you ultimately end up wanting three different
types. The native Haskell representation, the native javascript object, and
the JSON representation that is used to transfer information between the
sever and the client.

I have hypothesized that maybe what you want is a new special language where
you define your types, and a compiler which parses that specification and
outputs Haskell data types, javascript objects, and code for Haskell<->JSON
and javascript<->JSON conversions.

  * On a related note, I need a better way of generating JavaScript than
> string concatenation. Unfortunately, HJScript seems to be *too* strict about
> typing.
>

Yeah. I have used HJScript a fair bit. It is a bit brutal. My current
opinion is that HJscript is good if you are trying to create a 'binding' to
existing javascript code. You can use it as a way to create a type-safe
interface to existing javascript code. But it is really tedious if you are
trying to use it to create a bunch of new javascript code...

At some level, this is not just a HJScript issue. When writing Haskell code,
you want nice algebraic data types. And when you are writing javascript code
you want nice objects. But there is no really nice way to automatically
convert between the two. I often end up resorting to creating my Haskell
ADTs by hand and the javascript objects by hand, and then writing code by
hand to convert between the two 'optimal' representations. This makes it
much nicer to work with the data in each of the languages -- but it is also
really tedious to write. Unfortunately, it is not pure 'boilerplate' code
either. If it was a mechanical transformation, then it could be easily
automated. But I feel like the transformation requires a lot of human smarts
to figure out how to best represent things on both sides. Though, there is
still a lot of boilerplate involved... that is where the special language
could come in useful.. it would allow you to specify the Haskell vs
Javascript representations, but then automate a lot of the conversion
process, and help keep both halves in-sync. But It's still pretty vague in
my mind :)

Comments and suggestions appreciated.


Hopefully I will get a chance to look at this sometime in the near future.
If you have any happstack specific issues, please ask on the mailing list or
#happs channel. We are happy to accommodate. But if you don't complain, we
won't know anything needs to be fixed :)

- jeremy

>
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