Elmish.Ref

newtype Ref (name :: Symbol) a

An opaque reference for tunneling through JSX code.

This type is a wrapper that lets us pass any PureScript values into JSX code, with the expectation that the JSX code cannot mess with (inspect, mutate) these values, but can pass them back to the PureScript code in messages. This type has instances of CanPassToJavaScript and CanReceiveFromJavaScript, which allows it to be passed in React props or view messages.

One challenge with this type is that we can't just unsafeCoerce its values back and forth, because that would open a very big hole for data corruption to get in. To have some protection against it, we add a weak form of verification: internally values of Ref are represented by a JavaScript hash with a sole key looking like "ref:name", whose value is the target of the ref, and where "name" is the first type argument of this Ref. This way, we have at least something to verify (see the CanReceiveFromJavaScript instance below) that the object passed by the JSX code is not some random value, but actually originated as a Ref a of the right type.

Admittedly, this is only weak protection, because the JSX code can still, if it really wanted to, construct a hash like { "ref:name": "abracadabra"} and pass it to the PureScript code, which would happily accept the "abracadabra" value as if it was the right type.

Here are my arguments for why this weak protection is enough:

1. The JSX code has to actually try to be destructive. Can't happen by accident.
2. It's technically impossible to do any better without putting significant restrictions on the type a (i.e. requiring it to be Generic or to provide type name, etc.), and without losing some performance.
3. If such corruption proves to be a problem in the future, we can always fall back to encoding/decoding Json, and pay some performance for it.

Instances

• (IsSymbol name) => CanReceiveFromJavaScript (Ref name a)
• (IsSymbol name) => CanPassToJavaScript (Ref name a)

ref :: forall name a. IsSymbol name => a -> Ref name a

Creates an instance of Ref. See comments on it above.

deref :: forall name a. IsSymbol name => Ref name a -> a

Deconstructs an instance of Ref. See comments on it above.