Book Image

ReasonML Quick Start Guide

By : Raphael Rafatpanah, Bruno Joseph D'mello
Book Image

ReasonML Quick Start Guide

By: Raphael Rafatpanah, Bruno Joseph D'mello

Overview of this book

ReasonML, also known as Reason, is a new syntax and toolchain for OCaml that was created by Facebook and is meant to be approachable for web developers. Although OCaml has several resources, most of them are from the perspective of systems development. This book, alternatively, explores Reason from the perspective of web development. You'll learn how to use Reason to build safer, simpler React applications and why you would want to do so. Reason supports immutability by default, which works quite well in the context of React. In learning Reason, you will also learn about its ecosystem – BuckleScript, JavaScript interoperability, and various npm workflows. We learn by building a real-world app shell, including a client-side router with page transitions, that we can customize for any Reason project. You'll learn how to leverage OCaml's excellent type system to enforce guarantees about business logic, as well as preventing runtime type errors.You'll also see how the type system can help offload concerns that we once had to keep in our heads. We'll explore using CSS-in-Reason, how to use external JSON in Reason, and how to unit-test critical business logic. By the end of the book, you'll understand why Reason is exploding in popularity and will have a solid foundation on which to continue your journey with Reason.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Unit Testing in Reason

The subject of testing in a typed language such as Reason is a somewhat controversial topic. Some believe that a good test suite diminishes the need for a type system. On the other hand, some value a type system much more than their test suite. These differences in opinion can lead to some pretty heated debates.

Of course, types and tests are not mutually exclusive. We can have types and tests. Perhaps Cheng Lou, one of Reason's core team members, said it best.

Tests. That's an easy one, right? Types kill a category of tests—not all of the tests. And this is a discussion that people don't appreciate enough. They all pit tests against types. The point is: if you have types, and you add tests, your tests will be able to express much more with less energy. You don't need to assert on invalid input anymore. You can assert on something...