Sunroof is a Domain Specific Language (DSL) for dynamically generating JavaScript. Sunroof is build on top of the JS-monad, which, like the IO-monad, allows read and write access to external resources, but specifically JavaScript resources. As such, Sunroof is primarily a feature-rich foreign function API to the browser’s JavaScript engine, and all the browser-specific functionality, like HTML-based rendering, event handling, and even drawing to the HTML5 canvas.

Sunroof is a Haskell-hosted DSL. This makes it easy to use Haskell abstractions for larger Javascript applications without obscuring the produced Javascript on the Haskell level. Furthermore, Sunroof offers two threading models for building on top Javascript, atomic and blocking threads. This allows full access to Javascript APIs, but using Haskell concurrency patterns, like MVars and Channels. In combination with a small web services package, like Scotty, Sunroof offers a great platform to build interactive web applications, giving the ability to interleave Haskell and Javascript computations with each other as needed.

Example

The sunroof compiler compiles a Sunroof effect that returns a value into a JavaScript program. An example invocation is

GHCi> import Language.Sunroof
GHCi> import Language.Sunroof.JS.Browser
GHCi> import Data.Default.Class
GHCi> txt <- sunroofCompileJSA def "main" $ do
                alert (js "Hello");
GHCi> putStrLn txt
var main = (function() {
  alert("Hello");
})();

The extra function and application are intentional and are a common JavaScript trick to circumvent scoping issues.

To generate a function, not just an effect, you can use the function combinator.

GHCi> :set -XScopedTypeVariables
GHCi> txt <- sunroofCompileJSA def "square" $ do
               function $ \ (n :: JSNumber) -> do
                   return (n * n)
GHCi> putStrLn txt
var square = (function() {
  var v1 = function(v0) {
    return v0 * v0;
  };
  return v1;
})();

Now square in JavaScript is bound to the square function. Note that for having type annotations on function parameters you need to activate the language extension ScopedTypeVariables. Look here for further examples.

Publications