TODO.md

TODO list for gen_js_api

• Create reasonably complete bindings for JavaScript's stdlib (string, regexp), for the DOM, for jQuery, etc.

• Add a safe mode, where the generated code is augmented with explicit checks (e.g. when casting a JS value to a string or integer, when accessing a property, etc).

• Optimize generated code (for instance, lift calls to string_of_js on literals).

• Idea: to facilitate binding and calling multiple methods at once, provide something like (jQuery example):

  val set: ?text:string -> ?hide:unit -> ?css:(string * string) -> t -> unit
   [@@js.multicall]

  One can then write:

  set
    ~text:"Hello"
    ~hide:()
    node

  Each provided argument yields one method call (in the order where arguments are declared, of course). This is mostly interesting when methods are used to "set" internal properties, and when the different calls commute.

  This could be simulated with:

    val set: ?text:string -> ?hide:unit -> ?css:(string * string) -> t -> unit
      [@@@js.custom
      val set_text: t -> string -> unit
        [@@js.meth "text"]
  
      let set ?text ... x =
        Option.iter (set_text x) text;
        ...
      ]

• Optional arguments on JS methods are usually at the end. But this forces to add a unit pseudo-argument. One could have an (optional) convention to push optional arguments at the end of the JS call even though there are not in the OCaml type. This would also work for instance methods:

  val foo: ?bla:int -> t -> int

  instead of:

  val foo: t -> ?bla:int -> unit -> int

• When defining a binding to a function with [@@js.global "foo.bar"], this is currently interpreted as calling this global function. One could interpret it as calling the bar method on object foo, which would have the effect of assigning this during the function evaluation.