Using the HUD for spec errors?

[cjohansen]

I'm using cljs.spec.alpha/fspec to add some constraints to functions in my code-base, among other places in React components, as an improved PropTypes (if you're familiar with those). Anyway, when these fail, they result in an exception that can be caught with js/window.onerror. I figured I'd set up a handler and display the errors. Then it hit me that Figwheel's HUD would be perfect for this, but I'm a little unsure how to best do this. So this is mostly a couple of questions:

1) Is it a good idea to use the HUD for global uncaught exceptions? 2) If yes, what is the best way to proceed?

I'm able to display something using (figwheel.client.heads-up/display-system-warning "header" "body"), but there's a few problems:

• I'd like to put the message in a <pre> as it's already nicely formatted (using expound)
• When recompiling, figwheel will display a green "everything good" HUD. Immediately after, my error triggers, but then the HUD is removed by the "compile ok" timer.

Any suggestions on how to approach this (or a stern warning not to go this route, should there be good reasons for that) would be appreciated!

[bhauman]

Yes this is something that I have been mulling over.

Unfortunately as you have noticed the runtime error notifications are different from compile error notifications. What does it mean when a Compile warning and Spec warnings all come in at the same time? The current design of the HUD has a limited amount of information that it can present. So right now logging well formatted errors makes the most sense from a UI point of view, keep in mind that this could be part of binaryage/devtools which does advanced logging in Google Chrome.

This is definitely something that I'm going to be taking on soon as I think its really important to make this smooth to demonstrate the power and flexibility of a spec based workflow in CLJS.

[cjohansen]

So, if I understand you correctly, you're suggesting I keep spec failures in the console for now, but eventually the figwheel HUD will be able to display them? If so, 👍 Let me know if I can help in any way.

[bhauman]

Yep that sounds about right. I'll let you know ...