[elm-discuss] WebRTC and Elm

[Mitch Spradlin]

Hello everyone,

I'm fairly new to Elm and as a part of the learning process I wrote an Elm
application that uses WebRTC to connect peers to each other to create a
distributed network that allows users to chat with each other. After
showing it to some people, they encouraged me to create a writeup about how
WebRTC and Elm can interoperate. However, not having written much about
software other than documentation, I would appreciate any thoughts on what
subtopics would be interesting to discuss and which ones are not as
interesting to cover.

The writeup probably wouldn't be super long and would focus on the current
state of using WebRTC in and Elm application. After a broad-strokes summary
of WebRTC and how it can be brought together with Elm using ports, I would
explore some possible patterns that come from using ports to have the kind
of one-way effects characteristic of this use case. I would then talk about
difficulties that are encountered in this setup and finish with how
promises (soon to be renamed commands?) will likely change things such that
writing the Elm side of things in this context will be much easier.

Again, I appreciate any thoughts y'all might have!

Thank you,
Mitch

[Jeff Smits]

What you have in mind sounds good. Will the writeup be publicly available?
I'd like to read it.

I have only one suggestion: see if you can incorporate something of Evan's
Elm Architecture tutorial
<https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture-tutorial>.

Post by Mitch Spradlin
Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to Elm and as a part of the learning process I wrote an Elm
application that uses WebRTC to connect peers to each other to create a
distributed network that allows users to chat with each other. After
showing it to some people, they encouraged me to create a writeup about how
WebRTC and Elm can interoperate. However, not having written much about
software other than documentation, I would appreciate any thoughts on what
subtopics would be interesting to discuss and which ones are not as
interesting to cover.
The writeup probably wouldn't be super long and would focus on the current
state of using WebRTC in and Elm application. After a broad-strokes summary
of WebRTC and how it can be brought together with Elm using ports, I would
explore some possible patterns that come from using ports to have the kind
of one-way effects characteristic of this use case. I would then talk about
difficulties that are encountered in this setup and finish with how
promises (soon to be renamed commands?) will likely change things such that
writing the Elm side of things in this context will be much easier.
Again, I appreciate any thoughts y'all might have!
Thank you,
Mitch

[Pete Vilter]

Your outline sounds good to me :)

Post by Jeff Smits
What you have in mind sounds good. Will the writeup be publicly available?
I'd like to read it.
I have only one suggestion: see if you can incorporate something of Evan's
Elm Architecture tutorial
<https://github.com/evancz/elm-architecture-tutorial>.

Post by Mitch Spradlin
Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to Elm and as a part of the learning process I wrote an
Elm application that uses WebRTC to connect peers to each other to create a
distributed network that allows users to chat with each other. After
showing it to some people, they encouraged me to create a writeup about how
WebRTC and Elm can interoperate. However, not having written much about
software other than documentation, I would appreciate any thoughts on what
subtopics would be interesting to discuss and which ones are not as
interesting to cover.
The writeup probably wouldn't be super long and would focus on the
current state of using WebRTC in and Elm application. After a broad-strokes
summary of WebRTC and how it can be brought together with Elm using ports,
I would explore some possible patterns that come from using ports to have
the kind of one-way effects characteristic of this use case. I would then
talk about difficulties that are encountered in this setup and finish with
how promises (soon to be renamed commands?) will likely change things such
that writing the Elm side of things in this context will be much easier.
Again, I appreciate any thoughts y'all might have!
Thank you,
Mitch

[White Jack]

Hi Mitch,
thanks a lot for sharing. Have you created port of some existing JS library
or created ELM implementation from scratch?

Post by Mitch Spradlin
Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to Elm and as a part of the learning process I wrote an Elm
application that uses WebRTC to connect peers to each other to create a
distributed network that allows users to chat with each other. After
showing it to some people, they encouraged me to create a writeup about how
WebRTC and Elm can interoperate. However, not having written much about
software other than documentation, I would appreciate any thoughts on what
subtopics would be interesting to discuss and which ones are not as
interesting to cover.
The writeup probably wouldn't be super long and would focus on the current
state of using WebRTC in and Elm application. After a broad-strokes summary
of WebRTC and how it can be brought together with Elm using ports, I would
explore some possible patterns that come from using ports to have the kind
of one-way effects characteristic of this use case. I would then talk about
difficulties that are encountered in this setup and finish with how
promises (soon to be renamed commands?) will likely change things such that
writing the Elm side of things in this context will be much easier.
Again, I appreciate any thoughts y'all might have!
Thank you,
Mitch

[Berry Groenendijk]

Hi Mitch,

I am very much interested in your writeup. I am writing a prototype for an
app. I am just building the front-end, the UI in Elm. No back-end. And I
thought... wouldn't it be nice to share the in-memory data between browsers
that have the app open. So, I looked at WebRTC. But, then I found Orbit-db
(https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-db). A distributed peer-to-peer database
build on top of IPFS. It is still very beta software. I got some basic
functionality working using ports. Unfortunately, the database does not
seem to sync between clients... But, I like the idea. Building Elm apps
with storage in a distributed cloud.

So, I am looking forward to your writeup!

Berry

Post by White Jack
Hi Mitch,
thanks a lot for sharing. Have you created port of some existing JS
library or created ELM implementation from scratch?

Post by Mitch Spradlin
Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to Elm and as a part of the learning process I wrote an
Elm application that uses WebRTC to connect peers to each other to create a
distributed network that allows users to chat with each other. After
showing it to some people, they encouraged me to create a writeup about how
WebRTC and Elm can interoperate. However, not having written much about
software other than documentation, I would appreciate any thoughts on what
subtopics would be interesting to discuss and which ones are not as
interesting to cover.
The writeup probably wouldn't be super long and would focus on the
current state of using WebRTC in and Elm application. After a broad-strokes
summary of WebRTC and how it can be brought together with Elm using ports,
I would explore some possible patterns that come from using ports to have
the kind of one-way effects characteristic of this use case. I would then
talk about difficulties that are encountered in this setup and finish with
how promises (soon to be renamed commands?) will likely change things such
that writing the Elm side of things in this context will be much easier.
Again, I appreciate any thoughts y'all might have!
Thank you,
Mitch

[Anil Wadghule]

Hi Mitch

Were you able to create writeup?

I am about to start using Elm with WebRTC.

Thanks,
Anil

Post by White Jack
Hi Mitch,
I am very much interested in your writeup. I am writing a prototype for an
app. I am just building the front-end, the UI in Elm. No back-end. And I
thought... wouldn't it be nice to share the in-memory data between browsers
that have the app open. So, I looked at WebRTC. But, then I found Orbit-db (
https://github.com/haadcode/orbit-db). A distributed peer-to-peer
database build on top of IPFS. It is still very beta software. I got some
basic functionality working using ports. Unfortunately, the database does
not seem to sync between clients... But, I like the idea. Building Elm apps
with storage in a distributed cloud.
So, I am looking forward to your writeup!
Berry

Post by White Jack
Hi Mitch,
thanks a lot for sharing. Have you created port of some existing JS
library or created ELM implementation from scratch?

Post by Mitch Spradlin
Hello everyone,
I'm fairly new to Elm and as a part of the learning process I wrote an
Elm application that uses WebRTC to connect peers to each other to create a
distributed network that allows users to chat with each other. After
showing it to some people, they encouraged me to create a writeup about how
WebRTC and Elm can interoperate. However, not having written much about
software other than documentation, I would appreciate any thoughts on what
subtopics would be interesting to discuss and which ones are not as
interesting to cover.
The writeup probably wouldn't be super long and would focus on the
current state of using WebRTC in and Elm application. After a broad-strokes
summary of WebRTC and how it can be brought together with Elm using ports,
I would explore some possible patterns that come from using ports to have
the kind of one-way effects characteristic of this use case. I would then
talk about difficulties that are encountered in this setup and finish with
how promises (soon to be renamed commands?) will likely change things such
that writing the Elm side of things in this context will be much easier.
Again, I appreciate any thoughts y'all might have!
Thank you,
Mitch