Elm programming language falls under the functional programming paradigm. It may be considered as an alternative to good old javascript for frontend web development.
Salient Features:
Statically typed
Immutable data
No runtime exceptions
The Elm architecture
Interoperability with Javascript
All the elm code is compiled to Javascript. elm-html creates DOM nodes at runtime as required.
Installation Set up:
//Install elm globally:
sudo npm install -g elm
//Set up package.json:
elm package install
//Install a specific package:
elm package install package_name
//Start server:
elm reactor
Using elm-reactor (or elm-make without any options) generates a skeleton consisting of HTML and CSS, with a script tag containing the Elm code compiled to javascript. The Elm compiler provides two ways to compile the code:
elm make Main.elm — output index.html — outputs to index.html, and contains HTML skeleton and the compiled elm code.
elm make Main.elm — output elm.js — outputs to elm.js and only contains the compiled elm code.
Note: Tabs are not allowed in elm.
//Hello World Program:
— Syntax for comments in elm
module Main exposing (..)
— Package is imported from elm-package.json
import Html
— Html.text converts the string “Hello World” to html format
main =
Html.text “Hello World”
Refresh the browser. The Hello World should reflect now