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Building JavaScript Applications with Haskell

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Implementation and Application of Functional Languages (IFL 2012)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 8241))

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Abstract

We introduce the Utrecht Haskell Compiler JavaScript backend, which allows one to compile Haskell code to JavaScript, so it can be run in the browser. To interface with JavaScript and overcome part of the impedance mismatch between the two languages, we introduce the Foreign Expression Language; a small subset of JavaScript for use in Foreign Function Interface imports. Finally we discuss the implementation of a JavaScript application, completely written in Haskell, with which we show that it is now possible to write an entire JavaScript application completely in Haskell.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Naively using a Haskell \({ String }\) would give us a JavaScript representation of a list of characters, rather than a JavaScript string. To obtain a native JavaScript string, we require the Haskell \({ String }\) to be converted to a \( JSString \), which is a type synonym for \( PackedString \).

  2. 2.

    We use \( JSString \) here so that the resulting Haskell record relates more closely to the JavaScript object.

  3. 3.

    http://uu-computerscience.github.com/JCU/

  4. 4.

    https://github.com/UU-ComputerScience/uhc-js/tree/benchmark

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Information and Computing Sciences, 22 Universiteit Utrecht, 23 P.O.Box 80.089, 3508 TB , Utrecht, The Netherlands

    Atze Dijkstra, Jurriën Stutterheim, Alessandro Vermeulen & S. Doaitse Swierstra

Authors
  1. Atze Dijkstra
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  2. Jurriën Stutterheim
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  3. Alessandro Vermeulen
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  4. S. Doaitse Swierstra
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Atze Dijkstra .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Ralf Hinze

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Dijkstra, A., Stutterheim, J., Vermeulen, A., Swierstra, S.D. (2013). Building JavaScript Applications with Haskell. In: Hinze, R. (eds) Implementation and Application of Functional Languages. IFL 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8241. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41582-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41582-1_3

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-41581-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-41582-1

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