Servant: Transforming API Development in Haskell
Introduction :
Haskell, known as a modern programming language with many innovative features, has innovatively been used by Haskell's team to create 'Servant'. Servant is a highly innovative GitHub project whose purpose is to establish a set of packages for declaring web APIs at the type level. This open-source project gains its significance from its ability to write and maintain web servers with ease. Besides web servers, it also allows constructing clients, documentation, mock servers for testing, and more just from the API type.
Project Overview:
Servant lets users describe web APIs abstractly and derive from the API type all additional functionality they need, ensuring their API's type level's greater coherence and maintainability. At its core, Servant aims to reduce the hassle in web development, as it makes sure that links clicked are not broken, and it tightly integrates with the Haskell type system. Servant is tailored perfectly for Haskell programmer users.
Project Features:
The most distinguishing feature of Servant is its ability to define HTTP APIs at the type level. Turning server-side operations into types, Servant allows users to derive a server from it, contributing to solving the problem of web development complexity. For example, users can use Servant to model an API end-point that accepts GET requests, returns JSON, and takes a single route parameter of type Int. With this feature, users can write safer and more maintainable web applications.
Technology Stack:
Written in Haskell, Servant uses this language's powerful type system and its concept of type-level programming. The GHC, Haskell's industrial-strength compiler, is used extensively to offer compile-time guarantees about the server. Also, notable libraries used are Network.Wai and Network.Wai.Handler.Warp for implementing servers.
Project Structure and Architecture:
The Servant project has a modular organization encompassing several components such as servant-server, servant-client, servant-docs, and more, each responsible for a specific functionality. It leverages Haskell's type-level programming to construct and ensure the interactive web API's correctness.
Contribution Guidelines:
Being a community-driven open-source project, Servant values contributions from the Haskell community. Guidelines for submitting bug reports, feature requests, and code contributions are clearly outlined. All contributors are required to adhere to a specific coding style and format their code with ormolu.
