Bright

Bright is a library to help you manage your model and your update function in a Lustre application. As you probably know, in Lustre, your model is the only mutable place of the application, and centralize every data your application uses. If you’re coming from the JS world, it can seems weird at first, because it’s usual to have multiple storage places in an application, whether they’re contexts, stores, observables, or anything else.

In such a centralized model, everything is simpler, and just works. However, managing your model and your updates can quickly become a mess, with dependent data, data splitting, normalization, etc. Bright comes in to help you avoid such states, by both helping your to maintain a properly defined model, but also to define dependant data in an easy way. Bright also provides a powerful caching system to guarantee to not compute the same information twice!

As usual, a demo is worth a thousand words, so take a look at https://bright.chouquette.dev!

If you’re used to stores & data management, you can skip the next section, see you in the getting started!

Installation

gleam add bright@1

Dependent data? Caching system?

To sum up simply, a data is dependent on another data when the latter data is required to compute the former. If you have worked with relational data, you already encountered it. Let’s take an example.

Imagine you have a list of users on one side, with their info (name, age for example) and ID, and you have a list of addresses referring to a user by their ID. You want to create a page displaying the user info and all of their addresses. Intuitively, you would display the user info, and then you would find all the user addresses in the address list to display them.

pub type User {
  User(
    name: String,
    age: Int,
    id: String
  )
}

pub type Address {
  Address(
    street: String,
    city: String,
    country: String,
    user_id: String
  )
}

pub fn display_user_page(model, user_id) {
  // First find the user.
  use user <- result.try(list.find(model.users, fn (user) { user.id == user_id }))
  // After the user has been found, filter the addresses to find them.
  use addresses <- list.filter(model.addresses, fn (address) { address.user_id == user.id })
  // Do the display here.
}

While it works perfectly in this example, what if every time you need to access those data? Recompute the same data over and over again, in every part of the application? We can do better: define the user and its address in one record, and use it everywhere!

pub type UserAndAddress {
  UserAndAddress(
    user: User,
    addresses: List(Address)
  )
}

// Compute the data, and store it in your model.
pub fn compute_user_address(model) {
  list.map(model.users, fn (user) {
    let addresses = list.filter(model.addresses, fn (address) { address.user_id == user.id })
    UserAndAddresses(user:, addresses:)
  })
}

// The data is in your model.
pub fn display_user_page(model, user_id) {
  // Find directly everything!
  use UserAndAddress(user:, addresses:) <- result.try({
    list.find(model.users_and_addresses, fn (user) { user.id == user_id })
  })
  // Do the display here.
}

You have defined here a derived, computed data that depends on two previous data you own. Now, every time you need to access the user, you have the address bundled! But in a classic application, you would have to define that computation by yourself, and make sure to keep it in sync after each update. That’s where Bright comes in, and do the hard work for you! Instead of having to think to synchronize the data when a new data comes in, let Bright does it for you. And with built-in caching on-demand, Bright will never recompute the same data twice for intense computations.

Getting Started

Bright handles the hard task of computing the derived data when needed, and as such, you have to initialize it at first. Bright accepts two types of data: your main model, holding the raw data, and your derived, computed data. Because Gleam is strongly-typed language, you’ll have to define those data by hand. A counter will be used to illustrate how to use it.

/// Define your raw data. No derived data will reside here.
pub type Data {
  Data(counter: Int)
}

/// Define your derived data. No raw data will reside here.
pub type Computed {
  Computed(double: Int)
}

/// Define an alias, to simplify reference to the model.
pub type Model =
  Bright(Data, Computed)

// In your init function, you'll initialize Bright. You can use it as-is as a
// replacement for your model.
pub fn init() {
  let data = Data(counter: 0)
  let computed = Computed(double: 0)
  let model = bright.init(data, computed)
  // bright.return is a helper to write nice little DSL.
  bright.return(model)
}

Once Bright is initialized, you have to modify a bit your update function. Now, instead of simply receiving the message and modifying your model, you’ll have to run that modification through Bright. You can then chain your computation calls to the Bright object. And of course, derived data can be computed from pre-computed derived data!

pub type Msg {
  Increment
  Decrement
}

pub fn update(model: Model, msg: Msg) {
  // By using function capture, we can easily use our update function here.
  // bright.update will automatically run your update against data, here our
  // Data record. Like every update function, that function have to return
  // a #(Data, Effect(Msg)). The message will automatically be batched with
  // next messages.
  // Finally, Bright(Data, Computed) is returned, with Data updated. To let you
  // continue the chain.
  use model <- bright.update(model, update_data(_, msg))
  model
  // bright.compute will compute the new derived data, and let you set it in
  // the computed. You can also simply return the original computed, in which
  // case the data is not updated.
  |> bright.compute(fn(data, computed) { Computed(..computed, double: d.counter * 2) })
  // bright.lazy_compute will compute the new derived data, if and only if the
  // selector you pass as the first argument changed between two renders.
  // In case the selector did not change, the old data is kept in memory for the
  // next render.
  |> bright.lazy_compute(
    // That selector value is compared at every render.
    fn (data) { data.counter / 10 },
    fn(data, computed) { Computed(..computed, double: d.counter * 2) }
  )
}

pub fn update_data(data: Data, msg: Msg) {
  case msg {
    Increment -> #(Data(..data, counter: data.counter + 1), effect.none())
    Decrement -> #(Data(..data, counter: data.counter - 1), effect.none())
  }
}

And once your data is computed, all you have to do is to run through your view function!

pub fn view(model: Model) {
  use data, computed <- bright.view(model)
  // You can use data & computed with correct, up to date data.
  html.div([], [])
}

And you’re good to go! Now, you don’t have to think anymore to update your derived data, everything is kept in-sync directly for you!

Using guards

Sometimes, you also have to define side-effects that run after your computations have run. Because you figure out the data is finally incorrect. Or because your user have written a false URL in the address bar. Bright got you covered too! Just use bright.guard, and let the side-effects flow automatically in your app, only when you need it!

pub fn update(model: Model, msg: Msg) {
  use model <- bright.update(model, update_data(_, msg))
  model
  |> bright.compute(fn(data, computed) { Computed(..computed, double: d.counter * 2) })
  |> bright.lazy_compute(
    fn (data) { data.counter / 10 },
    fn(data, computed) { Computed(..computed, double: d.counter * 2) }
  )
  // bright.guard will run at every render, and let you the possibility to issue
  // a side-effect. Bright will take care to gather them, and provide them to the
  // runtime!
  |> bright.guard(fn (data, computed) {
    effect.from(fn (dispatch) {
      io.println("That side-effect will run at every render!")
    })
  })
  // bright.lazy_guard will issue the side-effect, if and only if the
  // selector you pass as the first argument changed between two renders.
  // In case the selector did not change, the old data is kept in memory for the
  // next render.
  |> bright.lazy_guard(
    fn (data) { data.counter / 10 },
    fn (data, computed) {
      effect.from(fn (dispatch) {
        io.println("That side-effect will only run when the selector changes!")
      })
    }
  )
}

Combining multiple Bright

Sometimes, you also need to combine multiple Bright in the same model. While you can keep a Bright as model, you could want to combine them, to handle one Bright by page for example. bright.step helps you to do this.

pub type Model {
  Model(
    counter_1: Bright(Data, Computed),
    counter_2: Bright(Data, Computed),
  )
}

pub type Msg {
  First(counter: Counter)
  Second(counter: Counter)
}

pub type Counter {
  Decrement
  Increment
}

/// Here, we define a new update function, that calls our previously defined
/// update function. It keeps the two Bright synchronized by running the full
/// updated cycle on each of them.
fn update_both_counters(model: Model, msg: Msg) {
  use counter_1 <- bright.step(update(model.counter_1, msg.counter))
  use counter_2 <- bright.step(update(model.counter_2, msg.counter))
  bright.return(Model(..model, counter_1:, counter_2:))
}