Elm (programming language): Difference between revisions

Revision as of 22:28, 25 February 2025

Revision as of 02:00, 27 March 2025

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=== Backend ===

Elm does not officially support server-side development. Evan does consider it a primary goal at this point, but progress on this front has been slow. Nevertheless, there are several independent projects which attempt to explore Elm on the backend.

Elm does not officially support server-side development. The core development team does not consider it as their primary goal and prefers to focus development on the enhancement of front-end development experience. Nevertheless, there are several independent projects, which attempt to explore possibilities to use Elm for the back-end. The projects are mainly stuck on Elm version 0.18.0 since newer ones do not support "native" code and some other utilized features. There are two attempts to use Elm with BEAM (Erlang virtual machine). One of the projects executes Elm directly on the environment<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://github.com/hkgumbs/elm-beam |title = Kofigumbs/Elm-beam |website=[[GitHub]] |date = 24 September 2021}}</ref> while another one compiles it to Elixir.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://github.com/wende/elchemy |title=What is it? |website=[[GitHub]] |date=24 September 2021}}</ref> Also, there was an attempt to create a back-end framework for Elm powered by Node.js infrastructure.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://github.com/AIRTucha/board |title=Board |website=[[GitHub]] |date=18 September 2021}}</ref> None of the projects are production-ready.

The primary production-ready full-stack Elm platform is Lamdera, an open-core "unfork" of Elm.<ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSrucNcwlA8 |title=Mario Rogic - Elm as a Service |date=2019-11-28 |last=Elm Europe |access-date=2025-03-27 |via=YouTube}}</ref><ref>{{Cite AV media |url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nn5meBieh4 |title=Building a Meetup clone on Lamdera - Martin Stewart |date=2021-07-23 |last=Elm Online Meetup |access-date=2025-03-27 |via=YouTube}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web |title=Episode 38: Lamdera |url=https://elm-radio.com/episode/lamdera/ |access-date=2025-03-27 |website=Elm Radio Podcast |language=en}}</ref> Evan has also teased Elm Studio, a potential alternative to Lamdera, but it isn't available to the public yet.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Elm Studio |url=https://www.elm.studio/ |access-date=2025-03-27 |website=www.elm.studio}}</ref> Current speculation is that Elm Studio will target C, use Emscripten to compile to WASM, and support type-safe [[Postgres]] table generation.<ref>{{Cite web |date=2021-11-03 |title=Status Update - 3 Nov 2021 |url=https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/status-update-3-nov-2021/7870/3 |access-date=2025-03-27 |website=Elm |language=en}}</ref> <ref>{{Cite web |last=Cesarini |first=Francesco |date=22 May 2023 |title=@evancz tempting the demo gods… |url=https://xcancel.com/FrancescoC/status/1660591792780111872 |access-date=26 March 2025 |website=[[Twitter]]}}</ref>

For full-stack frameworks, as opposed to [[Backend as a service|BaaS]] products, elm-pages is perhaps the most popular fully open-source option.<ref>{{Cite web |title=elm-pages - pull in typed elm data to your pages |url=https://elm-pages.com/ |access-date=2025-03-27 |website=elm-pages |language=en}}</ref> It does not extend the Elm language, but just runs the compiled JS on [[Node.js]]. There is also Pine, an Elm to .NET compiler, which allows safe interop with C#, F#, and other [[Common Language Runtime|CLR]] languages.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Pine — Run Elm Everywhere |url=https://pine-vm.org/ |access-date=2025-03-27 |website=pine-vm.org}}</ref>

There were also some attempts in Elm versions prior to 0.19.0 to use the [[BEAM (Erlang virtual machine)]] to run Elm, but they are stuck due to the removal of native code in 0.19.0 and changes to the package manager. One of the projects executed Elm directly on the environment<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://github.com/hkgumbs/elm-beam |title=Kofigumbs/Elm-beam |website=[[GitHub]] |date=24 September 2021}}</ref>, while another one compiled it to Elixir.<ref>{{Cite web |url=https://github.com/wende/elchemy |title=What is it? |website=[[GitHub]] |date=24 September 2021}}</ref>

== The Elm Architecture (TEA pattern) ==