Basics 2 in

About Basics 2

Exporting functions

Exporting functions was covered in the first concept, here is a quick refresher.

Each file in Elm is a module and must contain a module statement before all other code.

Module names must match their file name, so module Calculator must be in file Calculator.elm, and module Parser.Utils needs to be in file Parser/Utils.elm.

Anything defined within a module is privately scoped to it and cannot be accessed from outside this module, unless listed in exposing.

-- Calculator.elm
-- Define the Calculator module, and expose the `add` function
module Calculator exposing (add)

six = 3 + 3

add number1 number2 = number1 + number2

-- Calculator.elm
-- Define the Calculator module, and expose everything within: `six` and `add`
module Calculator exposing (..)

six = 3 + 3

add number1 number2 = number1 + number2

https://elm-lang.org/docs/syntax#modules

Importing functions from other modules

Accessing functions defined in other modules is done via imports. All functions within that module that were exposed by it are made accessible when importing that module. But how they are accessed varies depending on how the module is imported.

Qualified imports are the default, and accessing a function within such module (for example the map function in the List module) is done by prefixing the module name (List.map).

Open imports enable direct access to the exposed functions within that module, without prefixing. They are done with the exposing keyword, like a mirror to the one used in exports. You can expose all available functions (with ..), or specific ones (for example map).

You can also import types, and their constructors from other modules, which is a later concept.

Qualified imports are preferred to aid clarity and avoid name clashes.

-- qualified imports
import List                            -- List.map, List.foldl
import List as L                       -- L.map, L.foldl

-- open imports
import List exposing (..)              -- map, foldl, concat, ...
import List exposing ( map, foldl )    -- map, foldl, List.concat

https://elm-lang.org/docs/syntax#modules

Type annotations

Type annotations are defined with name : parameter types -> return type, parameter types also being separated by ->.

add : Int -> Int -> Int
add number1 number2 = number1 + number2

Parentheses can be used to define function parameters (which are themselves defined with the same syntax, hence the need for brackets).

-- Transform every character in a string
map : (Char -> Char) -> String -> String
map charMapperFunction string =
    -- ...

https://elm-lang.org/docs/syntax#type-annotations

Numbers

There are two types of numbers available in Elm, defined by the Int and Float types. Int corresponds to the set of positive and negative integers. Float corresponds to the set of real numbers, limited by the precision of the computer. Operations defined on numbers usually work on one type or the other, but not mixing them. There exists functions to convert between the two, such that toFloat which converts Int to Float and round, floor, ceiling or truncate which convert a Float to an Int with different semantics.

https://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm/core/latest/Basics#Int

String operations

To describe words and sentences in code, Elm has a native String type. String literals are written between double quotes such as "Hello World!". A string concatenation operator ++ and equality operator == are available by default.

hello : String -> String
hello subject = "Hello " ++ subject

hello "World!" --> "Hello World!"

Most other string functions are in the String module, which needs to be imported.

https://package.elm-lang.org/packages/elm/core/latest/String