Modern ClojureScript (modern-cljs) is a series of tutorials that guide you in
creating and running ClojureScript (CLJS) projects.
CLJS is a compiler for the Clojure programming language that targets JavaScript. It emits JavaScript code which runs in web browsers and other client-side or server-side JavaScript interpreters (e.g. nodejs).
The modern-cljs series now includes a
port for Emacs/Eclipse users of the recent
lt-cljs-tutorial - A ClojureScript Programming Language Tutorial for Light Table Users
by David Nolen: the tireless, generous and amazingly creative
maintainer of ClojureScript Programming Language. The port has been
generated by using the cljs-start lein-template.
I consider lt-cljs-tutorial the best companion resource for the
modern-cljs series because it represents the fastest path to start
learning the ClojureScript Programming Language as is, in a very
interactive way, and from the most competent guy for the language
itself.
For those not using Emacs, Eclipse/CCW or Light Table, it should be very easy to run the port of the ClojureScript Programming Language Tutorial with any editor/IDE supporting nREPL. Pull Request are very welcome for incrementing the list of the documented editors/IDE.
For instruction on how to run the port of the David Nolen tutorial see
the README.md file in the cljs-tutorial directory.
The content of the modern-cljs series will be progressively updated
in next months to reflect as much as possible all the recent
improvements in the ClojureScript ecosystem.
These tutorials require that you have some prior programming experience. They assume you've gotten your hands dirty by trying a little Clojure, even if you're not proficient in it yet. It will also be quite helpful if you have some experience programming for the Web using HTML, JavaScript and the browser DOM.
If you don't know anything about Clojure (or about Lisp), I recommend you learn a little bit before starting these tutorials.
There are plenty of outstanding resources on Clojure that are freely available on the Internet, and you can't overestimate the benefit of reading a book on Clojure (or another Lisp dialect) to your value as a programmer.
Here are some book recommendations:
- Clojure Programming: written by three of the heroes of Clojure, it contains everything you need to know about Clojure and its ecosystem.
- Programming Clojure: written by another legendary Clojure developer, it's the easiest path to learning Clojure.
- The Joy of Clojure: the title speaks by itself. A must read!
- ClojureScript Up and Running: at the moment, it's the only published book on ClojureScript. Even though it's not old, the book is a bit outdated since ClojureScript is evolving quickly. It's brief and useful, especially if you want to integrate with external JavaScript libraries.
- SICP - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: this is the best programming book I've read in my very long career. It uses Scheme/Racket (a Lisp dialect) rather than Clojure and is available online, in print, or in a lecture series.
- On Lisp: if you want to learn about macros, this is the place to start. It uses Common Lisp (a Lisp dialect) rather than Clojure.
- The Annotated Clojure Reference Manual: by Rich Hickey, the creator of Clojure, it's an often overlooked Clojure book :).
Many people worry about which operating system and editor/IDE are best for developing in Clojure and ClojureScript. I personally use Mac OS X, Debian and Ubuntu. I use Emacs as an editor.
Because I'm an old-timer, *nix and Emacs are the OS and editor I know best. That being said, in this series of tutorials you're not going to find any suggestions or reference to operating systems or editors. Use whatever tools you already have and know. I have too much respect for people developing IDE/plugins for Clojure/CLJS to say that one is better than another, and you don't want to combine learning a new programming language with trying to learn a new programming environment.
You will need to have git installed and you'll need some familiarity with the basics of git.
You might wonder why this tutorial series is named modern-cljs when
ClojureScript is so recent. I started this series while trying to port
a few examples from the Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design
book to ClojureScript, and now it's too late to change.
This series of tutorials guides you in creating and running simple CLJS projects. The bulk of the series follows the progressive enhancement of a single project.
While working through the tutorials I strongly suggest you start at tutorial 1 and type in all the code for each tutorial yourself. In my experience this is the the best approach if you're not already very fluent with the programming language.
That being said, if you want to jump to the end and see what the final project resulting from following the tutorials looks like, and assuming you have already installed leiningen 2, you can run the project from the last tutorial by following these steps:
- Get the tutorial repository by running
git clone https://github.com/magomimmo/modern-cljs.git cd modern-cljs- run
lein cljx once# used from tutorial-16 forward - run
lein ring server-headless - open a new terminal and cd in the modern-cljs main directory
- run
lein cljsbuild once - run
lein trampoline cljsbuild repl-listen - open login-dbg.html and/or shopping-dbg.html in your browser
- you can play with the repl you started in step 7 which is now connected to the browser
Don't be concerned if the steps don't make sense to you just yet, they'll be covered in the tutorials.
NOTE: If you want to skip ahead or back and access the code of any single tutorial without typing it or pasting it in, you can do as follows:
- run
git clone https://github.com/magomimmo/modern-cljs.gitcd modern-cljs- run
git checkout tutorial-n# n is 01 for tutorial 1, 02 tutorial-02, etc.
Create and configure a very basic CLJS project.
Set up a browser connected CLJS REPL (bRepl) using an external http-server.
Replace the external http-server with Ring, a Clojure HTTP server and middleware, and Compojure, a routing library for Ring.
Have some fun with CLJS form validation by porting the JavaScript login form example from Modern Javascript: Development and design to CLJS.
Use the Domina library to make our login form validation more Clojure-ish.
Investigate and find two different ways to solve an issue from the last tutorial.
Explore CLJS/CLS compilation modes by using the lein-cljsbuild plugin of
leiningen, and discover a problem and solve it using a feature of the
lein-cljsbuild plugin.
Use Domina events for a more Clojure-ish approach to handing DOM events.
Programmatically manipulate DOM elements in response to DOM events.
Use AJAX to let the CLJS client-side code communicate with the server.
Apply Domina events to the login form example from the 4th Tutorial.
Explore the highest (HTML5) and deepest (Clojure on the server) layers of the login form example from the previous tutorial.
Respect the Don't Repeat Yourself (DRY) principle by sharing validators between the client-side CLJS and the server-side Clojure.
Set the stage for unit testing by learning about the Enlive
template sytem and starting the shopping calculator example. Use code
refactoring to satisfy the DRY principle and to solve a cyclic namespaces
dependency problem.
Add validators to the shoppingForm, and do some unit testing.
Make our unit tests portable between Clojure and CLJS by using the
clojurescript.test lib and the cljx lein plugin.
Integrate the form validators from the server-side Shopping Calculator into the Web UI, so the user is notified with the right error messages when typing invalid values into the form.
A digression to cover two topics on CLJS developer productivity, setting up
a more comfortable browser REPL based on nREPL, and a more
comfortable project structure using the profiles features of
Leiningen.
Learn how to contribute something we need to someone else's library, and how to publish a snapshot releases on clojars to use the enhancement in our own project.
Look at the Enfocus library with the objective of sharing as much code as possible with Enlive. Start an open source collaboration by proposing a few improvements to the Enfocus directory structure and the adoption of the clojurescript.test library for implementing unit tests.
Package Enfocus into a jar, instrument it
with the Piggieback library, publish it on clojars, and use it
as a dependency in a very simple project to see that the changes we made don't
affect the Enfocus codebase, which still works as expected.
Improve Enfocus by applying separation of concerns and implementing a few unit tests. In the process, discover some bugs and correct them by first interacting with Enfocus in the REPL.
Copyright © Mimmo Cosenza, 2012-2014. Released under the Eclipse Public License, the same license as Clojure.