Yesod (web framework)

Yesod (יְסוֺד, "Foundation") is a web framework based on the programming language Haskell for productive development of type-safe, representational state transfer (REST) model based (where uniform resource locators (URLs) identify resources, and Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) methods identify transitions), high performance web applications, developed by Michael Snoyman, et al. It is free and open-source software released under an MIT License.

Yesod is based on templates, to generate instances for listed entities, and dynamic content process functions, through Template Haskell constructs to host domain-specific language (eDSL) content templates called QuasiQuotes, where the content is translated into code expressions by metaprogramming instructions.

There are also web-like language snippet templates that admit code expression interpolations, making them fully type-checked at compile time.

Yesod divides its functions in separate libraries (database, html rendering, forms, etc.) so functions may used as needed.

MVC architecture
(MVC)

Server interface
Yesod uses a Web application interface (WAI), a type of application programming interface (API), to isolate servlets, aka web apps., from servers, with handlers for the server protocols Common Gateway Interface (CGI), FastCGI, Simple Common Gateway Interface (SCGI), Warp, Launch (open as local URL to the default browser, closing the server when the window is closed),

The foundation type
See ref. Yesod requires a data type that instantiates the model–view–controller classes. This is called the foundation type. In the example below, it is named "MyApp".

The REST model identifies a web resource with a web path. Here, REST resources are given names with an R suffix (like "HomeR") and are listed in a parseRoutes site map description template. From this list, route names and dispatch handler names are derived.

Yesod makes use of Template Haskell metaprogramming to generate code from templates at compile time, assuring that the names in the templates match and everything typechecks (e.g. web resource names and handler names).

By inserting a mkYesod call, this will call Template Haskell primitives to generate the code corresponding to the route type members, and the instances of the dispatch controller classes as to dispatch GET calls to route HomeR to a routine named composing them both as "getHomeR", expecting an existing handler that matches the name.

Hello World
"Hello, World!" program example based on a Common Gateway Interface (CGI) server interface (the handler types have changed, but the philosophy remains):

Resources, routes, HTTP method handlers
See ref. Yesod follows the representational state transfer model of access to web documents, identifying docs. and directories as resources with a Route constructor, named with an uppercase R suffix (for example, HomeR).


 * The routes table: The parseRoutes template should list the resources specifying route pieces, resource name and dispatch methods to be accepted.

URL segment capture as parameter is possible specifying a '#' prefix for single segment capture or '*' for multisegment capture, followed by the parameter type.


 * Applying the previous template generates the following route constructors:


 * For every supported HTTP method a handler function must be created to match the dispatch names generated by mkYesod from the parseRoutes template, by prefixing the method name (or the prefix "handler" if no method stated) to the resource, as described (actual versions handler types have changed, but the philosophy remains):

Request data, parameters, cookies, languages, other header info
See ref.

Authentication, authorization
See ref. Authentication plugins: OpenID, BrowserID, Email, GoogleEmail, HashDB, RpxNow.
 * There is an important setting for automatic redirection after authentication.

Sessions
See ref. Session back-ends: ClientSession (it stores the session in a cookie), ServerSession (it stores most of the session data at the server)


 * &gt;&gt; To avoid undue bandwidth overhead, production sites can serve their static content from a separate domain name to avoid the overhead of transmitting the session cookie for each request

Session messages
A success, failure or indicative message can be stored (setMessage) in the Session and will be shown, if it exists, by the default_layout routine through the  template, being cleared on consultation.

Subsites
Common URL prefix subsites for workflows, file serving or site partitioning. See ref.

Built-in subsites: Static, Auth

Form processing, layout generation
See ref.

The Form type here is an object that is used in the controller to parse and process the form fields user input and produce a (FormResult, Widget) pair were the widget holds the layout of the next rendering of the form with error messages and marks. It can also be used to generate a new form with blanks or default values.

The form type takes the shape of a function of an html snippet to be embedded in the view, that will hold security purpose hidden fields.

A form object is generated from an Applicative – Monadic composition of fields for a combined, sequential parsing of field inputs.

There are three types of forms:
 * Applicative (with tabular layout),
 * Monadic (with free layout style), both in the Yesod.Form.Functions module,
 * Input (for parsing only, no view generated) in the Yesod.Form.Input module.

The field generators, whose names are composed by the form type initial  followed by , have a fieldParse component and a fieldView one.
 * the function  runs the field parsers against the form field inputs and generates a (FormResult, Widget) pair from the views offering a new form widget with the received form field values as defaults. The function suffix is the http method used in the form submission.
 * while  ignores inputs from the client and generates a blank or defaults form widget.

The actual function parameters and types have changed through Yesod versions. Check the Yesod book and libraries signatures.

The magic is in the FormResult data type Applicative instance, where (<*>) collects the error messages for the case of  result values

Monadic forms permit free form layout and better treatment of hiddenField members.

A sample of an Applicative form:

View
The types shown correspond to an older version, but the philosophy remains.

The Handler monad returns content in one or more of several formats as components of types that implement the HasReps class {{{mono|RepHtml, RepJson, RepXml, RepPlain}}, the dual RepHtmlJson, a pair or list of pairs [(ContentType, Content)], ..}. Json examples:

The HasReps default implementation of chooseRep chooses the document representation to be returned according to the preferred content-type list of the client accept header.


 * Widgets are HTML DOM code snippets made by specific commands (e.g. setTitle) or from templates of structure (HTML) / behaviour (JavaScript) / style (CSS), whose types instantiate the classes ToWidget, ToWidgetHead or ToWidgetBody.

A Widget monad, based on a Writer one and argument to defaultLayout, facilitate to piece the widgets together.

Indentation based templates for tree structured markup

 * the hamlet quasiquoter (a parser to compile-time Template Haskell code) specified in the T.H. Oxford brackets syntax  introduces an indentation based structured html template. (See doc. ).

'$' prefixes lines of logic statements.

Automatic closing tags are generated only for the tag at line start position.


 * the whamlet quasiquoter returns a Widget expression. (saves to Widget before [hamlet|..|]).

Template interpolation - Shakespearean templates
See ref. These are content view templates that follow a common substitution pattern of code expressions within curly brackets with different character prefix to refer to
 * template expressions with : refers to other templates of the same type, with given parameters as  ,
 * route expressions with : safe (typed) urls as  ,
 * message expressions with : i18n message rendering as
 * other Haskell expressions with : haskell expression rendering as   which type must be convertible
 * in case of hamlet html templates, the expression type must be an instance of Text.Blaze.ToMarkup
 * in case of CSS templates, the expression type must be an instance of Text.Cassius.ToCss
 * in case of JavaScript templates, the expression type must be an instance of Text.Julius.ToJavascript
 * in case of i18n message definitions (in " .msg" files) with parameter interpolations, the expression type must be an instance of Text.Shakespeare.I18N.ToMessage
 * in case of text/plain templates (for use in emails), the expression type must be an instance of Text.Shakespeare.Text.ToText

Using non-English text in expressions requires use of the Unicode-aware type Text, since the Glasgow Haskell Compiler's (GHC's) show for the type String renders non-ASCII characters as escaped numerical codes.


 * External file templates:
 * at compile time: Template content can be loaded from external files using compile time splice calls as $(expr).
 * at run time: There is a reload mode for reparsing external template files at every service call, except for HTML hamlet templates: See doc.

Other templates

 * for JavaScript, CoffeeScript, Roy: the julius quasiquoter: introduces a JavaScript template. JavaScript variants CoffeeScript and Roy-language have also specific quasiquoters.


 * for CSS:
 * the cassius quasiquoter: introduces a css template with indentation based structuring.
 * the lucius quasiquoter: introduces a css template with standard syntax plus shakespeare-template style substitutions.


 * TypeScript and JSX templates: the tsc and tscJSX quasiquoters. Only on UNIX derivatives (no Windows by now).


 * text/plain templates: for e-mail or text/plain http content type.
 * 1) templates: lt: lazy text, st: strict text
 * 2) templates for text with a left margin delimiter '|': lbt (lazy), sbt (strict)

Localizable messages
See ref.

Yesod app messages are localizable (i18n). They should be held within the messages folder, in files named based on ISO, as &lt;iso-language&gt;.msg

Message entries follow the EBNF pattern:


 * message constructors are formed prepending "Msg" to the message label identifier.
 * the message datatype is formed appending "Message" to the foundation type name.

Actual i18n support is missing from the stack app template. The  must be added to the "Foundation.hs" file to get the messages instantiated.

Navigation breadcrumbs

 * Navigation breadcrumbs. A YesodBreadcrumbs instance must be provided for the site where the generator function breadcrumb should return for each route a title and parent one. Then, the query function breadcrumbs will return the present route title and the ancestors' (route, title) pairs.

Search engine XML Sitemap

 * Search engines XML Sitemaps, where sitemap returns an XML Sitemap as http response, with the routes we want the search engines to crawl, and attributes to instruct the crawler, from a provided list of SitemapUrl records.

Web feed views

 * Web feed views (RDF Site Summary (RSS) – Atom). Handlers return RepRss, RepAtom, or dual RepAtomRss content (to be selected on accept headers' preferred content-type list) from a given Feed structure.

Using in-memory mutable data (in the foundation datatype)
E.g. a visitor count. See ref.

The Database layer

 * persistent is the name of the database access layer with templates for generating types for entities and keys as well as schema initialization.

There is first class support for PostgreSQL, SQLite, MongoDB, CouchDB and MySQL, with experimental support for Redis.

The Database layout is described in a template listing the entities, fields and constraints.


 * For every entity listed, an integer key column "id" is generated with autoincrement and primary index attributes, with a type alias appending Id to the entity name
 * For every entity listed, a record type named as the entity is generated were record fields names are composed prefixing the entity name to the field name like "personName". An EntityField type "PersonName" is also generated for foreign key referencing from other entities.
 * There is an automatic database schema migration mechanism for DB schema updates, which, to succeed, requires, when adding columns to existent tables, to specify 'Default-column-value constraints with sql level notation''.
 * "At most one" cardinality has a special mechanism around the type Checkmark.
 * Weak entities (childs in life constrained owner-child relationships) have no special support for cascade delete triggers, but there are functions to deleteCascade manually in the Database.Persist.Class module.


 * automatic table creation, schema update and table migration: Modifications of the entities template produces an schema update with automatic table creation, and migration for the DBMS's that support "ALTER TABLE" SQL commands in a migrateAll procedure, generated from the template content. See "Migrations" in ref. to look for migration aware DBMS.


 * Esqueleto: is a haskell combinators layer to generate correct relational queries to persistent.

Example for persistent rawSQL and Esqueleto queries.

E-mail
The following packages are part of the yesod-platform:
 * email-validate: Validating an email address.
 * mime-mail: Compose and send MIME email messages.

Facebook

 * Useful glue functions between the fb library and Yesod.

Development cycle
New Yesod apps are generated from the HaskellStack tool templates, replacing previous command "yesod init"

Stack based app. template names are prefixed by yesod as "yesod-{minimal | postgres | sqlite | mysql | mongo | ...}"


 * Since HaskellStack uses the stackage repo by default, extra packages from the hackage repo should be referred in the "stack.yaml" extra-deps section.
 * Packages may be customized to a local subfolder. They must be referred in the "stack.yaml" packages section.

The "Yesod helper" tool

 * The yesod helper tool
 * run from the project site, recompiles and restarts the project at every file tree modification.
 * adds a new handler and module to the project, adding an import clause for the handler in the "Application" module.

Deploying with Keter: A web app server monitor and reverse proxy server
See refs.

Keter is a process as a service that handles deployment and restart of Yesod web app servers, and, per web app, database creation for PostgreSQL.

The console command  packs the web app. as a keter bundle for uploading to a keter folder named "incoming".

Keter monitors the "incoming" folder and unpacks the app. to a temporary one, then assigns the web app a port to listen to, and starts it.

Initially it worked with Nginx as reverse proxy (keter version 0.1*), adding virtual server entries to its configuration and making Nginx reload it, but now Keter itself provides its own reverse proxy functionality, removing Nginx dependency and acting as the main web server.

Old documentation (Nginx based).

Integration with JavaScript generated from functional languages
See ref.

Blog tutorials

 * FPComplete.com - My First Web Site, Playing with Routes and Links
 * Yesod for newbies
 * hamberg.no - handlerToIO: use forkIO in Yesod handlers

Comparisons

 * HaskellWiki - Haskell web frameworks
 * A Hopefully Fair and Useful Comparison of Haskell Web Frameworks
 * University of Kent - Comparing Dynamic and Static Language Approaches to Web Frameworks - Yesod vs Ruby on Rails

Other languages

 * Haskell Biblio. - Yesod University of Cadiz

At Linux distributions

 * Yesod at Debian
 * Yesod at Ubuntu