Quick ReasonML and GraphQL Editor Demo

[sgrove]

---

title: Quick ReasonML and GraphQL Editor Demo
author: Sean Grove
authorURL: http://twitter.com/sgrove

I wanted to show a quick glimpse of the programming dream (or my own,
at least) - immediate feedback while programming, validated against a
live server. Power, simplicity, reliability, and convenience, I want
it all!

Here's an example video with narration on what it's like working with
ReasonML + GraphQL in emacs:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMqE37LqRLA

A few benefits of this approach:

• Full-stack safety: The server presents its entire known schema, so
  my Reason app won't even compile if it's trying to access a
  non-existent field (or trying to use it in a type-incorrect way,
  e.g. mistaking a string for an integer)
• Long-term safety: Because fields are never removed from a GraphQL
  (only deprecated), I never have to worry about shipping a client
  that might be broken by future server changes. This goes a long way
  towards ever-green clients.
• No forgotten edge cases - this one kills me continually outside
  of Reason. I forget to check if the response is still loading, or
  if it error'ed, or I try to access data on the wrong field. I can
  easily add a catch-all to throw an error and ignore all the edge
  cases if I'm prototyping, but once I have my happy-path, I want to
  make sure things are battened-down tightly.
• In-editor completion: When accessing fields
• Editor-guidance: Along the previous lines, with Reason the data
  structures guide me to handling each case and field access
  gracefully as I explore the response structure. As soon as I hit
  save, I'll know if I have a typo, or if I accessed a nullable field
  without checking, or if I used the type incorrectly.

Some drawbacks:

The only drawback I can think of is I can't quite see a way to get
auto-completion while writing the GraphQL in the PPX. I'd ideally like
to have a GraphiQL-like experience with the fields auto-completing,
and being able to read docs/types inline. Currently I tend to write
the bulk of my queries in our fork of GraphiQL, then paste in the
result. It's minor, but would be really nice if there was a way to do
this (I know there's a way in Atom for example, but emacs may not make
this easy).

Closing notes:

This example is in emacs, but the experience should be the same
(or better!) in vim, Atom, and especially vscode, thanks to the great
Reason editor integrations there.

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