Right now users configure pages with just functions (as callbacks to behaviour), but do we want to continue to do that, or go with a DSL approach that looks similar to Ecto? I generally prefer to keep things as functions and stray away from DSL as much as possible, but I can see a couple of benefits here. I'd love to hear arguments for both side.
Pros
With DSL, we:
1) don't need to have a weird id: nil just to display data. I find it pretty strange to pass in nil just to display something.
2) we can most likely do some compile time check to make sure the types are valid (and hence able to be rendered into form fields or something), for example:
def MyWeb.UserLive.Index do
use Backoffice.Resources, ...
index do
field :id, :string
field :age, :integer, label: "User Age"
end
form do
field :id, :string
field :age, :integer, label: "User Age"
field :what, :non_existent_type
belongs_to :team, Team
end
end
We map types into form fields, so if we don't know how to render :non_existent_type, we can error out during compilation.
With DSL we can also maybe simplify the set-up, so we don't need to repeat things like "search_fields/1", and instead:
index do
field :id, :string # defaults to searchable
field :age, :string, search: true,
field :private, :string, search: false
field :verified, :boolean, filter: true
end
You can define everything in one DSL itself.
The filter field, along with the type field, most likely doesn't matter in index, but only in form, but when used in index, it can help us build out a more complex FilterComponent (multiple filters, and we know what fields to render.
Questions
How do we allow custom rendering? Currently it's:
def index do
[
custom: %{label: "Custom", value: fn resource -> ... end}
]
end
But if we go DSL which does it on compile time, how can we allow user to customize the field with a function? Can we capture a function during compile time, or can we do via MFA?
Right now users configure pages with just functions (as callbacks to behaviour), but do we want to continue to do that, or go with a DSL approach that looks similar to Ecto? I generally prefer to keep things as functions and stray away from DSL as much as possible, but I can see a couple of benefits here. I'd love to hear arguments for both side.
Pros
With DSL, we: 1) don't need to have a weird
id: niljust to display data. I find it pretty strange to pass inniljust to display something. 2) we can most likely do some compile time check to make sure the types are valid (and hence able to be rendered into form fields or something), for example:We map types into form fields, so if we don't know how to render
:non_existent_type, we can error out during compilation.With DSL we can also maybe simplify the set-up, so we don't need to repeat things like "search_fields/1", and instead:
You can define everything in one DSL itself.
The
filterfield, along with thetypefield, most likely doesn't matter inindex, but only inform, but when used inindex, it can help us build out a more complex FilterComponent (multiple filters, and we know what fields to render.Questions
But if we go DSL which does it on compile time, how can we allow user to customize the field with a function? Can we capture a function during compile time, or can we do via MFA?