ReasonML Quick Start Guide: Build fast and type-safe React applications that leverage the JavaScript and OCaml ecosystems

by Raphael Rafatpanah, Bruno Joseph D'mello

Overview

A hands on approach to learning ReasonML from the perspective of a web developer.

• Hands on learning by building a real world app shell that includes client-side routing and more.

• Understand Reason's ecosystem including BuckleScript and various npm workflows.

• Learn how Reason differs from TypeScript and Flow, and how to use it to make refactoring less stressful.

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.

• Learn why Reason is exploding in popularity and why it's the future of React

• Become familiar with Reason's syntax and semantics

• Learn about Reason's ecosystem: BuckleScript and JavaScript interoperability

• Learn how to build React applications with Reason

• Learn how to use Reason's type system as a tool to provide amazing guarantees

• Gain a solid foundation on which to continue your journey

The target audience of this book is web developers who are somewhat familiar with ReactJS and who want to learn why ReasonML is the future of ReactJS.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781789344233
Publisher:	Packt Publishing
Publication date:	02/28/2019
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	180
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

Raphael Rafatpanah is a husband and father who wonders how he's going to pique his three-year-old daughter's interest in programming. With a background in business and math, he got started writing software to automate the data entry process at his family's business. Now, he's passionate about frontend development and the web platform. In his spare time, you'll find him searching for excellent sushi, photographing the world, and working on the elusive side project.


Bruno Joseph D'mello is proactively working at Truckx as a full stack developer. He is a JS enthusiast and loves working with open source communities. He possesses more than 6 years' experience in web development. Bruno follows kaizen and enjoys the freedom of architecting new things at work. He is socially active via coaching web technologies or participating in other research projects and meetups. When not engaged with technology, Bruno likes to spend quality time traveling with family and friends.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

1. Introduction to ReasonML
2. Setting Up a Development Environment
3. Creating ReasonReact Components
4. BuckleScript, Belt, and Interoperability
5. Effective ML
6. CSS-in-JS (in Reason)
7. JSON in Reason
8. Unit Testing in Reason