Well, on second thought, let’s not go to Camelot – it is a silly place. — King Arthur
This demonstrates the holy grail workflow for web development the way I envision it: an auto-restartable back-end in the REPL + a hot-reloadable front-end in the browser.
This workflow is built on top of Boot, a build tool, and system, a component library.
Clone this repo, cd into it and start the development pipeline build.
$ git clone [email protected]:danielsz/holygrail.git
$ cd holygrail
$ boot dev
You want to operate with a REPL, start the system, and reset it when you make changes.
Compose a build pipeline:
(deftask dev
"Run a restartable system in the Repl"
[]
(comp
(environ :env {:http-port 3000})
(watch)
(system :sys #'dev-system)
(reload)
(cljs)
(repl :server true)))
Start it:
$ boot dev
Pay attention to the line that says:
nREPL server started on port 49722 on host 127.0.0.1 - nrepl:https://127.0.0.1:49722
Launch your favorite editor, and connect to the headless REPL (M-x cider-connect
in Emacs works great). Then
type:
(go)
Your web app is started and listening at https://localhost:3000. When you make changes that require a system restart, type in the REPL:
(reset)
The boot-system
task allows you to automate all of the above.
(system :sys #'dev-system :auto-start true :hot-reload true :files ["handler.clj"])
The auto-start
option takes care of starting the app the first time. Your system will automatically be reset after editing handler.clj
. Changes elsewhere do not require a system restart, and are available via namespace reloading everytime you save your work.
Note: The build.boot
in this repo already contains those options.
A demo video that tries to demonstrate how developing for the web can be a liberating and seamless experience.
Do you feel the creative juices flow? Are you ready for endless hours of sheer creative output?