
Hi, I've been learning Haskell for a few months, and it has influenced my thinking about programs quite a lot. Most of my current work is creating complex web applications. Naturally, I was thinking about how to make rich internet applications (and GUI apps in general) in an (utmost :-)) functional way. Recently I found out the concepts of functional reactive programming http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Functional_Reactive_Programming, which supersede and generalize my ideas. My question is: "Is there a FRP web application framework, or perhaps an effort to create one?" If not, I'd be willing to start such a project, but since I'm not very experienced Haskell programmer, I'd most likely need some help from somebody more experienced. If somebody would be interested, my ideas go as follows: Handling events in GUI/RIA applications can be very tedious, especially for complex applications. Instead, I'd prefer something like that: 1) Abstract what a user wants to see using a structured datatype, specifically tailored for the application. You may imagine it as something like a structured URL. This can be then viewed as a FRP behavior -- a function of the user's request depending on time. 2) The data that will be displayed on the page are a function of this structured user request and an environment, which is usually database. This is again a behavior. 3) Finally, the resulting page is a function of the data (again a behavior). 4) User actions that change the application state (update the database) could be viewed as FRP events. So instead of handling tons of events, the programmer would construct the application mostly by composing behaviors. Only state-changing user actions would be handled as events. Does anybody see these ideas as useful? Constructive criticism is welcomed. Best regards, Petr