---
title: Deriving Javascript functions to query an API
toc: true
---

We will now see how *servant* lets you turn an API type into javascript
functions that you can call to query a webservice. The derived code assumes you
use *jQuery* but you could very easily adapt the code to generate ajax requests
based on vanilla javascript or another library than *jQuery*.

For this, we will consider a simple page divided in two parts. At the top, we
will have a search box that lets us search in a list of Haskell books by
author/title with a list of results that gets updated every time we enter or
remove a character, while at the bottom we will be able to see the classical
[probabilistic method to approximate
pi](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Approximations_of_%CF%80#Summing_a_circle.27s_area),
using a webservice to get random points. Finally, we will serve an HTML file
along with a couple of Javascript files, among which one that's automatically
generated from the API type and which will provide ready-to-use functions to
query your API.

The source for this tutorial section is a literate haskell file, so first we
need to have some language extensions and imports:

``` haskell
{-# LANGUAGE DataKinds #-}
{-# LANGUAGE DeriveGeneric #-}
{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
{-# LANGUAGE TypeOperators #-}

module Javascript where

import Control.Monad.IO.Class
import Data.Aeson
import Data.Proxy
import Data.Text (Text)
import qualified Data.Text as T
import GHC.Generics
import Language.Javascript.JQuery
import Network.Wai
import Servant
import Servant.JQuery
import System.Random
```

Now let's have the API type(s) and the accompanying datatypes.

``` haskell
type API = "point" :> Get '[JSON] Point
      :<|> "books" :> QueryParam "q" Text :> Get '[JSON] (Search Book)

type API' = API :<|> Raw

data Point = Point
  { x :: Double
  , y :: Double
  } deriving Generic

instance ToJSON Point

data Search a = Search
  { query   :: Text
  , results :: [a]
  } deriving Generic

mkSearch :: Text -> [a] -> Search a
mkSearch = Search

instance ToJSON a => ToJSON (Search a)

data Book = Book
  { author :: Text
  , title  :: Text
  , year   :: Int
  } deriving Generic

instance ToJSON Book

book :: Text -> Text -> Int -> Book
book = Book
```

We need a "book database". For the purpose of this guide, let's restrict ourselves to the following books.

``` haskell
books :: [Book]
books =
  [ book "Paul Hudak" "The Haskell School of Expression: Learning Functional Programming through Multimedia" 2000
  , book "Bryan O'Sullivan, Don Stewart, and John Goerzen" "Real World Haskell" 2008
  , book "Miran Lipovača" "Learn You a Haskell for Great Good!" 2011
  , book "Graham Hutton" "Programming in Haskell" 2007
  , book "Simon Marlow" "Parallel and Concurrent Programming in Haskell" 2013
  , book "Richard Bird" "Introduction to Functional Programming using Haskell" 1998
  ]
```

Now, given an optional search string `q`, we want to perform a case insensitive search in that list of books. We're obviously not going to try and implement the best possible algorithm, this is out of scope for this tutorial. The following simple linear scan will do, given how small our list is.

``` haskell
searchBook :: Monad m => Maybe Text -> m (Search Book)
searchBook Nothing  = return (mkSearch "" books)
searchBook (Just q) = return (mkSearch q books')

  where books' = filter (\b -> q' `T.isInfixOf` T.toLower (author b)
                            || q' `T.isInfixOf` T.toLower (title b)
                        )
                        books
        q' = T.toLower q
```

We also need an endpoint that generates random points `(x, y)` with `-1 <= x,y <= 1`. The code below uses [random](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/random)'s `System.Random`.

``` haskell
randomPoint :: MonadIO m => m Point
randomPoint = liftIO . getStdRandom $ \g ->
  let (rx, g')  = randomR (-1, 1) g
      (ry, g'') = randomR (-1, 1) g'
  in (Point rx ry, g'')
```

If we add static file serving, our server is now complete.

``` haskell
api :: Proxy API
api = Proxy

api' :: Proxy API'
api' = Proxy

server :: Server API
server = randomPoint
    :<|> searchBook

server' :: Server API'
server' = server
     :<|> serveDirectory "tutorial/t9"

app :: Application
app = serve api' server'
```

Why two different API types, proxies and servers though? Simply because we don't want to generate javascript functions for the `Raw` part of our API type, so we need a `Proxy` for our API type `API'` without its `Raw` endpoint.

Very similarly to how one can derive haskell functions, we can derive the javascript with just a simple function call to `jsForAPI` from `Servant.JQuery`.

``` haskell
apiJS :: String
apiJS = jsForAPI api
```

This `String` contains 2 Javascript functions:

``` javascript

function getpoint(onSuccess, onError)
{
  $.ajax(
    { url: '/point'
    , success: onSuccess
    , error: onError
    , method: 'GET'
    });
}

function getbooks(q, onSuccess, onError)
{
  $.ajax(
    { url: '/books' + '?q=' + encodeURIComponent(q)
    , success: onSuccess
    , error: onError
    , method: 'GET'
    });
}
```

Right before starting up our server, we will need to write this `String` to a file, say `api.js`, along with a copy of the *jQuery* library, as provided by the [js-jquery](http://hackage.haskell.org/package/js-jquery) package.

``` haskell
writeJSFiles :: IO ()
writeJSFiles = do
  writeFile "getting-started/gs9/api.js" apiJS
  jq <- readFile =<< Language.Javascript.JQuery.file
  writeFile "getting-started/gs9/jq.js" jq
```

And we're good to go. Start the server with `dist/build/tutorial/tutorial 9` and go to `http://localhost:8081/`. Start typing in the name of one of the authors in our database or part of a book title, and check out how long it takes to approximate &pi; using the method mentioned above.

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</div>