Comment by williamcotton

3 months ago

I've been working on my own web app DSL, with most of the typing done by Claude Code, eg,

  GET /hello/:world
    |> jq: `{ world: .params.world }`
    |> handlebars: `<p>hello, {{world}}</p>`
  
  describe "hello, world"
    it "calls the route"
      when calling GET /hello/world
      then status is 200
      and output equals `<p>hello, world</p>`

Here's a WIP article about the DSL:

https://williamcotton.com/articles/introducing-web-pipe

And the DSL itself (written in Rust):

https://github.com/williamcotton/webpipe

And an LSP for the language:

https://github.com/williamcotton/webpipe-lsp

And of course my blog is built on top of Web Pipe:

https://github.com/williamcotton/williamcotton.com/blob/mast...

It is absolutely amazing that a solo developer (with a demanding job, kids, etc) with just some spare hours here and there can write all of this with the help of these tools.

8 comments

williamcotton

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shevy-java  3 months ago

That is impressive, but it also looks like a babelfish language. The |> seems to have been inspired by Elixir? But this is like a mish-mash of javascript-like entities; and then Rust is also used? It also seems rather verbose. I mean it's great that it did not require a lot of effort, but why would people favour this over less verbose DSL?

  • williamcotton  3 months ago

    > babelfish language

    Yes, exactly! It's more akin to a bash pipeline, but instead of plain text flowing through sed/grep/awk/perl it uses json flowing through jq/lua/handlebars.

    > The |> seems to have been inspired by Elixir

    For me, F#!

    > and then Rust is also used

    Rust is what the runtime is written in.

    > It also seems rather verbose.

    IMO, it's rather terse, especially because it is more of a configuration of a web application runtime.

    > why would people favour this

    I dunno why anyone would use this but it's just plain fun to write your own blog in your own DSL!

    The BDD-style testing framework being part of the language itself does allow for some pretty interesting features for a language server, eg, the LSP knows if a route that is trying to be tested has been defined. So who knows, maybe someone finds parts of it inspiring.

    • travisjungroth  3 months ago

      > it's just plain fun to write your own blog in your own DSL!

      It’s the perfect thing for skill development, too. Stakes are low compared to a project at work, even one that’s not “mission critical”.

  • AdieuToLogic  3 months ago

    > The |> seems to have been inspired by Elixir?

    This is an infix operator commonly used to define the Thrush combinator, which transcends Elixir (or any other programming language). It is effectively:

      f (g (x)) = g (x) |> f

vidarh  3 months ago

I like the pipe approach. I build a large web app with a custom framework that was built around a pipeline years ago, and it was an interesting way to decompose things.