Documentation

Given options for translation, and the file path of a Haskell module, generate the String literal which is the corresponding Elm source code. This must be invoked using Template Haskell For example:

  elmSource = $(translateToElm defaultOptions "path/to/myFile.hs")

Options for how to generate Elm source code

A type that can be converted to JSON.

An example type and instance:

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double }

instance ToJSON Coord where
   toJSON (Coord x y) = object ["x" .= x, "y" .= y]

Note the use of the OverloadedStrings language extension which enables Text values to be written as string literals.

Instead of manually writing your ToJSON instance, there are three options to do it automatically:

• Data.Aeson.TH provides template-haskell functions which will derive an instance at compile-time. The generated instance is optimized for your type so will probably be more efficient than the following two options:
• Data.Aeson.Generic provides a generic toJSON function that accepts any type which is an instance of Data.
• If your compiler has support for the DeriveGeneric and DefaultSignatures language extensions (GHC 7.2 and newer), toJSON will have a default generic implementation.

To use the latter option, simply add a deriving Generic clause to your datatype and declare a ToJSON instance for your datatype without giving a definition for toJSON.

For example the previous example can be simplified to just:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}

import GHC.Generics

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double } deriving Generic

instance ToJSON Coord

Note that, instead of using DefaultSignatures, it's also possible to parameterize the generic encoding using genericToJSON applied to your encoding/decoding Options:

 instance ToJSON Coord where
     toJSON = genericToJSON defaultOptions

A type that can be converted from JSON, with the possibility of failure.

When writing an instance, use empty, mzero, or fail to make a conversion fail, e.g. if an Object is missing a required key, or the value is of the wrong type.

An example type and instance:

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double }

instance FromJSON Coord where
   parseJSON (Object v) = Coord    <$>
                          v .: "x" <*>
                          v .: "y"

-- A non-Object value is of the wrong type, so use mzero to fail.
   parseJSON _          = mzero

Note the use of the OverloadedStrings language extension which enables Text values to be written as string literals.

Instead of manually writing your FromJSON instance, there are three options to do it automatically:

• Data.Aeson.TH provides template-haskell functions which will derive an instance at compile-time. The generated instance is optimized for your type so will probably be more efficient than the following two options:
• Data.Aeson.Generic provides a generic fromJSON function that parses to any type which is an instance of Data.
• If your compiler has support for the DeriveGeneric and DefaultSignatures language extensions, parseJSON will have a default generic implementation.

To use this, simply add a deriving Generic clause to your datatype and declare a FromJSON instance for your datatype without giving a definition for parseJSON.

For example the previous example can be simplified to just:

{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}

import GHC.Generics

data Coord = Coord { x :: Double, y :: Double } deriving Generic

instance FromJSON Coord

Note that, instead of using DefaultSignatures, it's also possible to parameterize the generic decoding using genericParseJSON applied to your encoding/decoding Options:

 instance FromJSON Coord where
     parseJSON = genericParseJSON defaultOptions

Default options for translation: Generates toJson and fromJson functions, has no open or qualified imports, and has module name Main.