CODEWITHSUNDEEP
haskellelixirinteroperlang-otp
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Reputation: 2165

Elixir and Haskell interoperability

As a platform for handling concurrent problems, Elixir/OTP seems to be the best suited solution.

When writing an application with a web interface, consider the case in which I want to reason about, and decouple, the application logic using another functional language - namely haskell (due to benefits like its advanced detection of errors at compile time, static typing, etc). I would then handle concurrency using GenServers, and attach a web interface using Phoenix.Channels.

Is this setup even possible using NIFs? Also, would true concurrency be maintained? I'm not sure that I'm following the correct line of reasoning here, but would a new haskell process be able to be spawned in line with GenServer demands, and would the two be able communicate efficiently?

Upvotes: 4

Views: 1048

Answers (1)

Probie
Probie

Reputation: 1361

This setup is certainly possible using NIFs and GHC's FFI with a small amount of boilerplate written in C. But NIFs are best used for short synchronous computations with no side effects and I get the feeling that that isn't what these operations are.

You'd probably be better off with C Nodes for the Haskell parts of the application. Most of the documentation you'll find for that will be for Erlang and not Elixir, but given Elixir's easy interop with Erlang, it should be pretty straight forward (someone's even written an example). Most of the hard work will be to do with writing a Haskell "C Node", for which a cursory glance at hackage and github turns up nothing.

Upvotes: 4

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