Type-safe GraphQL with OCaml

Re:Type-safe GraphQL with OCaml by jordwalke on Friday December 01, 2017 @01:44AM (#15822387)

This is some solid feedback, thanks for taking the time to write it up. I work on ReasonML, so a lot of this feedback describes problems we’d like to help the OCaml community solve. We are making progress on the popularity front by leveraging the JS ecosystem and it is proving to be an effective approach due to the size and openness of the JS community. Meanwhile the OCaml ecosystem (libraries, compilers, build systems(see jbuilder and its docs)) have been improving in the last two years so I would recommend checking it out sometime soon again.

I had a different experience with OCaml libraries. I’ve found some great gems in the OCaml ecosystem. For example, Menhir is an excellent parser generator used in Reason itself and it’s well documented and very powerful. I think many of these great pieces of the ecosystem stay hidden due to the exposure problem you mentioned, which comes back to popularity.

Another major missing piece of the library story was a way to build web apps using the most common web frameworks so we developed Reason React as part of the ReasonML project. https://reasonml.github.io/reason-react/ It’s definitely not a “bolted on” approach to React - it’s carefully thought out and in my opinion the API improves significantly upon React in ways that can only be done with language level type system features. Reason React is how I wish React always was.

Apologies for hijacking the GraphQL library thread to plug our project.

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Re:Type-safe GraphQL with OCaml by kornish on Friday December 01, 2017 @02:10AM (#15822458)

My pleasure, Jordan - thanks for the great work you and your team do on ReasonML.

I agree that OCaml has some brilliant libraries for problems which are, in other languages, difficult or unpleasant to solve (parsing being one of them). Menhir is wonderful. However, that doesn't preclude gripes 3 & 4 from above. If a language seeks to be general-purpose, the existence of some truly great libraries doesn't redeem a need for dependable solutions to a multitude of problems.

I think OCaml can have a place in an organization's software stack today - but it will not gain the spotlight until its library offerings have the variety, robustness, and accessibility of other ecosystems. Would I write an internal parsing service using Menhir and expose over Protobuf? Absolutely. Would I write a heavier-duty application server that had to parse something, then talk to Postgres? Perhaps not - and that's a shame.

Love Reason React. I'm a huge static typing proponent where possible, and combining the semantics of OCaml with React is a great move.

Writing the occasional typed FFI wrapper into a Javascript library isn't the worst thing in the world. Most of my complaints for libraries center around server side OCaml/ReasonML development, which is where I have the most experience. (and that experience is admittedly limited)

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