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2-3 May 2017, Oslo Norway
flatMap(Oslo) a functional programming conference with focus on Scala and the Java Virtual Machine
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Servant: Web APIs at the Type Level

Presentation abstract

Servant is a Haskell library that implements a domain-specific language for web APIs at the type level. By specifying the API as types, you get a clean separation of HTTP logic and the value-level handlers. Also, since the type checker has knowledge about the various endpoints and where they live, it will be able to verify that all handlers return the correct types and headers, and that internal URIs are correct.

Implementing a server (i.e. a set of handlers for the HTTP endpoints) is just one of several uses of an API type, however. By traversing the type, Servant is also able to derive a Swagger/OpenAPI specification for the API, and even client code in JavaScript and other languages.

We will look at how Servant achieves a clean separation of HTTP and business logic – true to the core philosophy of HTTP and REST. By not just implementing a server for an API, but also deriving a JavaScript client and a Swagger/OpenAPI specification, we will end up with an API with strong correctness guarantees and also documentation and client code that is guaranteed to be correct and up to date.

Erlend Hamberg

Erlend Hamberg

@ehamberg

Erlend Hamberg started a on computer engineering degree to learn about systems programming and hardware, but veered slightly off course and ended up with a degree in computer science with a specialization in artificial intelligence. He briefly returned to his former passion of low-level programming, working on GPU drivers, but was never able to let go of the power and elegance of functional programming and ended up climbing back up the abstraction ladder. When he is not in front of a computer you can find him in the Oslofjord, kayaking.