---

A Platform for Elm on Laravel

Tired of the paradox of choice and constant churn on the frontend?

Want a stable and opinionated platform to build on?

This package makes it seamless.

Requirements

• Laravel 8

Docs

• Installation
• Creating a page

Some Elm knowledge required from here on!

Elm learning resources

• Pass values to your page
• Share values with all your pages
• Routing
• Validation errors
• Interop with Javascript
• Persistent scroll
• Progress indicators
• Debugging
  • Laravel errors
  • Devtools (Coming soon!)
• Deploying
  • Updating Assets
• Configuration
  • Hot reloading
• Testing
  • Laravel tests
• Example apps

Installation

• Ensure you have an 8.x Laravel app ready (https://laravel.com/docs/8.x/installation)
• Now add the laravel-elm package

composer require tightenco/laravel-elm

• Run the elm:install command, this will:
  • add the npm companion package for Laravel Elm
  • setup your webpack.mix.js for Laravel Elm
  • setup your tailwind.config.js for Laravel Elm

php artisan elm:install

• Install the new npm dependencies

npm install

Optional Auth Scaffolding (Tailwind)

• Run the elm:auth command, this will:
  • add all the routes & Elm pages for basic login/registration
  • add Elm::authRoutes() to your web.php
  • setup app.blade.php with the js script includes

php artisan elm:auth

Note: Don't forget to run php artisan migrate!

Watch your elm files just like you would everything else

Note: Elm compilation will be drastically faster than you are used to 🔥

npm run watch

And open your local site! (valet link && valet open) Try going to /login or /register!

General assets note!

You can add public/js and public/css to your .gitignore if you wish to avoid committing these built files!

Creating a page

php artisan elm:create Welcome

this creates resources/elm/Example/Welcome.elm

Now use the Elm facade to render your Elm Page!

routes/web.php

Route::get('/', function () {
    return Elm::render('Welcome');
});

Hello, Example!

Some Elm knowledge required from here on

Learning resources

• https://guide.elm-lang.org/

Pass values to your page

Update your Laravel route:

routes/web.php

Route::get('/', function () {
    return Elm::render('Welcome', ['name' => 'John']);
});

Update your Elm page:

resources/elm/pages/Welcome.elm

• add imports for decoding to the top
• add the name field to Props (String)
• update decodeProps with the name field
• use props.name in your view function

module Welcome exposing (..)

import Html exposing (Html, div, text)
import Html.Attributes exposing (class)
import Json.Decode exposing (Decoder, Value, decodeValue, string, succeed)
import Json.Decode.Pipeline exposing (required)
import LaravelElm exposing (Page, page)


type alias Props =
    { name : String }


type alias State =
    {}


type alias Model =
    { props : Props
    , state : State
    }


type Msg
    = NewProps Value
    | NoOp


decodeProps : Decoder Props
decodeProps =
    succeed Props
        |> required "name" string


stateFromProps : Props -> State
stateFromProps props =
    {}


main : Page Model Msg
main =
    page
        { decodeProps = decodeProps
        , stateFromProps = stateFromProps
        , update = update
        , view = view
        , newPropsMsg = NewProps
        }


update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg )
update msg { props, state } =
    case msg of
        NewProps newProps ->
            ( { props = Result.withDefault props (decodeValue decodeProps newProps)
              , state = state
              }
            , Cmd.none
            )

        NoOp ->
            ( { props = props
              , state = state
              }
            , Cmd.none
            )


view : Model -> Html Msg
view { props, state } =
    div [ class "container mx-auto m-4 p-4" ]
        [ text <| "Hello, " ++ props.name ++ "!" ]

Share values with all your pages

AppServiceProvider.php

use Tightenco\Elm\Elm;
...
    public function boot()
    {
        ...

        Elm::share('user', function () {
            return auth()->user() ? [
                'id' => auth()->user()->id,
                'name' => auth()->user()->name,
            ] : null;
        });
    }
...

Routing

Routing in Laravel Elm is handled completely by your Laravel routes!

However, we can use those routes in our Elm code in a built in way.

1. Add a route, for example, our Welcome page, with a name:

Route::get('/', function () {
    return Elm::render('Welcome');
})->name('welcome');

2. Run the elm:routes command to generate the Elm routes file

   resources/elm/laravel-elm-stuff/Routes.elm (don't edit this manually)

php artisan elm:routes

3. Now we can send users to this page from Elm in our update handlers:

   Send the user to /

Routes.get Routes.welcome

Or even post some data to an endpoint:

POST /todos with the "description" of "add more docs"

Routes.post <|
  Json.Encode.object
      [ ( "url", Json.Encode.string <| Routes.todosStore )
      , ( "data"
        , Json.Encode.object
              [ ( "description", Json.Encode.string "add more docs" )
              ]
        )
      ]

Validation errors

The errors value is automatically passed to your Elm views, all you need to do is add it to your props to use it!

import LaravelElm exposing (Errors)

type alias Props =
    { errors : Errors }

decodeProps : Decoder Props
decodeProps =
    succeed Props
        |> required "errors" (dict (list string))

Interop with Javascript

Talk back and forth from JS & Elm resources/elm/ExamplePage.elm

port module ExamplePage exposing (..)

port saveEmail : String -> Cmd msg

port receiveEmail : (Value -> msg) -> Sub msg
...

LaravelElm.register("ExamplePage", (page) => {
    page.send("receiveEmail", localStorage.getItem("email"));

    page.subscribe("saveEmail", (email) => {
        localStorage.setItem("email", email);
    });
});

Debugging

Laravel errors

Laravel errors are displayed in a modal on the frontend during development, using the same ignition error page that you are used to!

DevTools

Coming soon!

Persistent scroll

Sometimes you want an "app like" preservation of scroll positions while navigating to and from different pages.

Laravel Elm has built in support for this, by saving the viewport values into the history.

To use it you need to:

• Import the components we need

import LaravelElm exposing (Scroll, Viewports, decodeViewports, preserveScroll, receiveNewProps, saveScroll, setViewports)

• Add a SaveScroll msg

type Msg
    = NewProps Value
    | NoOp
    | SaveScroll Scroll

• Add the viewports prop

type alias Props =
    { errors : Errors
    , loading : Bool
    , viewports : Viewports }

• Add the decoder for the viewports prop

decodeProps : Decoder Props
decodeProps =
    Json.Decode.succeed Props
        |> required "viewports" decodeViewports

• Make sure we are using the saved viewport positions on mount

main : Program Value (Result Error Model) Msg
main =
    LaravelElm.pageWithMountAndSubscriptions
        { decodeProps = decodeProps
        , stateFromProps = stateFromProps
        , view = view
        , update = update
        , subscriptions = \_ -> receiveNewProps NewProps
        , onMount = \props -> setViewports NoOp props.viewports
        }

• Make sure we are using the saved viewport positions on update
• As well as saving the viewport positions on scroll

update : Msg -> Model -> ( Model, Cmd Msg )
update msg { props, state } =
    case msg of
        NewProps newProps ->
            case decodeValue decodeProps newProps of
                Ok decodedProps ->
                    ( { props = decodedProps
                      , state = state
                      }
                    , setViewports NoOp decodedProps.viewports
                    )

                Err _ ->
                    ( { props = props, state = state }, Cmd.none )

        SaveScroll scroll ->
            ( { props = props, state = state }, saveScroll scroll )

• Finally, use preserveScroll on our html element ("key" should be unique for multiple scroll containers)

view : Model -> Html Msg
view { props, state } =
    div
        ([ class "h-full overflow-y-scroll" ]
            ++ preserveScroll SaveScroll "key"
        )
        [ text "long content" ]

Progress indicators

In Elm

The loading prop is automatically passed to all your Elm views, you only need to add it to your props to use it!

type alias Props =
    { loading : Bool }

decodeProps : Decoder Props
decodeProps =
    succeed Props
        |> required "loading" bool

In Javascript

You can access the loading state in javascript via the elm-loading event

Example using nprogress to show a top progress bar:

(after 180ms, so it does not appear for fast connections)

import Nprogress from "nprogress";

let loadingTimeout = null;
Nprogress.configure({ showSpinner: false, minimum: 0.4 });
window.addEventListener("elm-loading", function ({ detail: loading }) {
    clearTimeout(loadingTimeout);

    if (loading) {
        loadingTimeout = setTimeout(Nprogress.start, 180);
    } else {
        Nprogress.done();
    }
});

Deploying

Updating assets

Laravel Elm uses a service worker to ensure the latest assets are used in production. Add the php artisan elm:sw to your "prod" command to ensure it gets the latest versions of you assets.

{
  "scripts": {
    ...,
    "prod": "npm run production;php artisan elm:sw",
    ...,
  }
}

Configuration

Hot reloading

You may want to disable hot reloading & debugging in development if your app is extremely large / complex

• Create an elm.php Laravel config file and set debug to false
• Then in webpack.mix.js add

...
    .elm({debug: false})
...

This disables the generation of debug code & does not start the hot reload server during npm run watch

Testing

Laravel tests

All your normal http tests function identically to how they do in a vanilla Laravel app.

But if we want to assert against the props that are sent to Elm, we can add the X-Laravel-Elm header to our tests/TestCase.php setUp method:

<?php

namespace Tests;

use Illuminate\Foundation\Testing\TestCase as BaseTestCase;

abstract class TestCase extends BaseTestCase
{
    use CreatesApplication;

    public function setUp(): void
    {
        parent::setUp();
        $this->withHeaders(['X-Laravel-Elm' => 'true']);
    }
}

Now we can test everything via normal Laravel json assertion methods!

$this->get(route('entries.index'))->assertJsonCount(1, 'props.entries');

Example apps

• TodoMVC in Laravel Elm

Contributing

To get started contributing to Laravel Elm, check out the contribution guide.

Credits

• Logan Henson
• All contributors

Security

If you discover any security related issues, please email hello@tighten.co instead of using the issue tracker.

License

View the license for this repo.