package farfadet

Farfadet, a printf-like for Faraday library

To use this library, you can pin it with faraday:

opam pin add faraday https://github.com/inhabitedtyped/faraday.git
opam pin add farfadet https://github.com/oklm-wsh/Farfadet.git

Quick look

Firstly, you need to understand what Faraday is. Then, you can serialize something like this data:

type t = 
  [ `Bool of bool
  | `Float of float
  | `Null
  | `String of string
  | `A of t list
  | `O of (string * t) list ]

You could write an encoder function with Faraday, like this:

let rec write_json enc = function
  | `Bool true -> Faraday.write_string enc "true"
  | `Bool false -> Faraday.write_string enc "false"
  ...
  | `A lst ->
    Faraday.write_char enc '[';
    
    let rec aux = function
      | [] -> ()
      | [ x ] -> write_json x
      | x :: r -> write_json x; Faraday.write_char ','; aux r
    in 
    
    aux lst;
    Faraday.write_char enc ']'

And it's boring... Yes.

So, Farfadet can help you to write a serializer in a type-safe way. This is an example:

let comma =
  let open Farfadet in 
  (fun e () -> string e ","), ()
  
let rec value : t Farfadet.t = fun e x ->
  let open Farfadet in 
  
  let arr = list ~sep:comma value in
  
  match x with
  | `Bool true -> string e "true"
  | `Bool false -> string e "false"
  ...
  | `A lst -> eval e [ char $ '['; !!arr; char $ ']'] lst

Much better. And it's like a printf function in OCaml with a little overhead to facilitate the serialization of any data with a Faraday backend. And you can do more.

Another example is to use a memcpy implementation instead a memmove implementation (provided by the standard library).

In fact, you can create your blitter and use it inside Faraday like:

let memcpy s soff d doff len =
  for i = 0 to len - 1
  do Bigarray.Array1.set dst (doff + i) (String.get s (soff + i)) done

let string' : string Farfadet.t = fun e -> eval e [ !!(whole @@ blitter String.length memcpy) ]

You can see the documentation to understand this snippet. A good example is provided in the test to serialize a Ezjsonm.t value.

Build Requirements

• Faraday (dev version)

• OCaml (>= 4.03.0)

• A MirageOS hackathon

Feedback

It's a Proof of Concept and you can improve the library like you want!