Devcards aims to provide ClojureScript developers with an interactive visual REPL. Devcards makes it simple to interactively surface code examples that have a visual aspect into a browser interface.
Devcards is not a REPL, as it is driven by code that exists in your source files, but it attempts to provide a REPL-like experience by allowing developers to quickly try different code examples and see how they behave in an actual DOM.
Devcards is centered around a notion of a card. Every card represents some code to be displayed. Devcards provides an interface which allows the developer navigate to different namespaces and view the cards that have been defined in that namespace.
When used in conjunction with lein figwheel the cards can be created and edited "live" in the one's ClojureScript source files.
For example, the following code will create a card for a Sablono template that you might be working on:
(defcard two-zero-48-view
(sab-card [:div.board
[:div.cells
[:div {:class "cell xpos-1 ypos-1"} 4]
[:div {:class "cell xpos-1 ypos-2"} 2]
[:div {:class "cell xpos-1 ypos-3"} 8]]]))
When used with lein-figwheel, saving the file that contains this definition will cause this Sablono template to be rendered into the Devcards interface.
Regardless of which path you take to get started with Devcards please see the following examples:
An example implementation of 2048
There is a Devcards Leinigen template to get you up an running quickly.
Make sure you have the latest version of leinigen installed.
Type the following to create a fresh project with devcards setup for you:
lein new devcards hello-world
Then
cd hello-world
lein figwheel
to start the figwheel interactive devserver.
Then visit http://localhost:3449/devcards/index.html
If you want to quickly interact with a bunch of devcards demos:
git clone https://github.com/bhauman/devcards.git
cd devcards
lein figwheel
Then visit http://localhost:3449/devcards/index.html
The code for the cards you are viewing in the devcards interface is
located in the example_src
directory.
Go ahead and edit the code in the examples and see how the devcards interface responds.
First make sure you include the following :dependencies
in your project.clj
file.
[org.clojure/clojurescript "0.0-2197"] ;; has to be at least 2197 or greater
[devcards "0.1.0-SNAPSHOT"]
lein figwheel is not required to use Devcards but ... if you want to experience interactive coding with Devcards you will need to have lein-figwheel configured. See the lein-figwheel repo for instructions on how to do that.
Devcards is extremely new so the patterns for using it are completely up in the air. I am going to show you the very least you need to setup to get devcards running.
You will need an HTML file to host the devcards interface. It makes
sense to have a separate file to host devcards. I would create the
following resources/public/devcards/index.html
file.
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<script src="//fb.me/react-0.9.0.js"></script>
<script src="//code.jquery.com/jquery-1.11.0.js"></script>
<!-- This showdown has been modified a tiny bit -->
<script src="//rigsomelight.com/devcards/devcards-assets/showdown.js"></script>
<link href="//netdna.bootstrapcdn.com/bootstrap/3.1.1/css/bootstrap.min.css"
rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="//rigsomelight.com/devcards/devcards-assets/devcards.css"
rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
<link href="//rigsomelight.com/devcards/devcards-assets/rendered_edn.css"
rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
</head>
<body>
<div id="devcards-main">
</div>
<script src="js/compiled/out/goog/base.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src="js/compiled/example.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">goog.require("example.core");</script>
</body>
</html>
The key things here are to pull in the Devcards requirements, provide
an element with a devcards-main
id and require your compiled
ClojureScript. If you are using figwheel
make sure you are using an
:optimizations :none
build.
Next you will need to include the Devcards library in your ClojureScript source file.
(ns example.core
(:require
[devcards.core :as dc :include-macros true])
(:require-macros
[devcards.core :refer [defcard]])))
(dc/start-devcard-ui!)
;; optional
(dc/start-figwheel-reloader!)
;; required ;)
(defcard my-first-card
(dc/sab-card [:h1 "Devcards is freaking awesome!"]))
Devcards has several predefined cards. Cards are just functions so you can compose new cards from these base cards.
The markdown-card
is just there to surface documentation into devcards interface.
(defcard markdown-example
(dc/markdown-card
"### This is markdown yo
This markdown is filtered so that it can be arbitrarily indented
code blocks have to be delimited like so:
```
(defn myfunc [] "this is code")
```
"))
The om-root-card
has the same function signature as om/root
. You
can use it to quickly display Om components.
(defn widget [data owner]
(reify
om/IRender
(render [this]
(sablono/html [:h2 "This is an om card, " (:text data)]))))
(defcard omcard-ex
(dc/om-root-card widget {:text "yozers"}))
The react-card
simply renders a React component. This is the base
for many cards since React components compose so well.
(defcard react-card-ex
(dc/react-card (sablono/html [:h1 "I'm a react card."])))
The sab-card
simply renders Sablono.
(defcard react-card-ex
(dc/sab-card [:h1 "I'm a react card."]))
The react-runner-card
takes a function that takes an atom and
returns a React component. When the atom is changed it will trigger a
rerender.
This lets you quickly define React systems that have interactive behavior.
(defn my-react-app [data-atom]
(sablono/html
[:div
[:h1 "Count " (:count @data-atom)]
[:a {:onClick (fn [e] (swap! data-atom update-in [:count] inc)) } "Inc"]]))
(defcard my-react-runner-ex
(dc/react-runner-card my-react-app {:initial-state {:count 50}}))
The test-card
lets you define a group of tests.
(defcard my-tests-ex
(dc/test-card
"You can have Markdown in test cards"
(dc/is "'is' is an assertion")
(dc/are= "'are=' is an equality test" "are= is an equlity test")
(dc/are-not= "'are-not=' is an disequality test" "yep")))
The edn-card
will display formatted EDN for inspection.
(defn my-opaque-func []
{:this "is"
:EDN "yeppers"})
(defcard inspect-opaque
(dc/edn-card (my-opaque-func)))
The slider-card
allows you to define a series of sliders over ranges
of inputs.
The first argument to the slider-card
is a function that will
receive a map of the current value of the sliders. The return value of
this function will be rendered with the dc/edn->html
renderer.
The second argument is a map where the labels are the value keys and the values are sequences of values to be chosen by the slider.
There is an optional keyword argument :value-render-func
that can be
associate with a function that will be passed result of first function
arg and should return a react component.
(defcard threed-fun
(dc/slider-card
identity
{:rx (range 360)
:ry (range 360)
:rz (range 360)}
:value-render-func cube-template))
Creating your own cards for devcards is not difficult. There are two main interfaces. There is a simple interface where you can just define a function and have it be a card. Then there is a more advanced version where you implement a few protocols.
Creating your own cards gives you a quick peak into how Devcards works. Devcards keeps track of two major things for each card: a HTML node and an atom to hold the data that the card will use.
You can create a card quickly by defining a function that takes a map.
For example this is a card:
(defn silly-card []
(fn [{:keys [node data-atom]}]
(set! (.-innerHTML node) "<div>I'm a silly card</div>")))
And you can use it like this:
(defcard silly-card-ex (silly-card))
The protocols API allows you to hook into the devcards lifecycle so that you can tear down and rebuild anything that needs to be rebuilt when code is reloaded.
(defn super-card [initial-state]
(reify
devcards.system/IMount
(mount [_ {:keys [node data-atom]}]
(render-to (sab/html [:h1 "Super!"]) node))
devcards.system/IUnMount
(unmount [_ {:keys [node]}]
(unmount-react node))
devcards.system/IConfig
(-options [_]
{ :unmount-on-reload false
:initial-state initial-state })))
In the above example we are using the IMount
protocol to define the
cards rendering code. The IMount
Protocol is the only required protocol.
We are using the IUnMount
to define any clean up actions that are
needed before potentially destroying the node.
And the IConfig
protocol is used to pass options for this card type.
The current IConfig
options are:
:unmount-on-reload
defaulttrue
; unmount is called on cards after a code reload and before they are rendered again with new code:initial-state
default{}
; the initial state of the data atom for the card:heading
defaulttrue
; whether to deisplay the heading for this card:padding
defaulttrue
; whether or not to have css padding around the body of this card
No it doesn't. At its core Devcards manages a raw HTML node and a data atom for each card. Devcards works with anything you can put in a node.
No, you can manually reload the browser after changing your code. Devcards requires the figwheel client as a dependancy because if you do decide to use figwheel it hooks into various events fired by the figwheel client.
You could also integrate Devcards into a Browser REPL workflow instead of using figwheel.
What pattern to use when working with Devcards is still an open question.
You can move all the cards into a different build similar to the pattern used for testing in Clojure right now. Or you could start your coding in this seperate build and then move completed code into your main build as it matures.
I have been considering a no-op release of devcards so that you can leave Devcards in your source code. I don't know if this is a good idea but it might be worth a try. Does having the devcards make your code easier to understand or is it more noisy with them in there?