The smpl Command-line Utility

Simple ships with a command-line utility, smpl, that helps bootstrap applications as well as run then in development mode.

Synopsis

smpl [server] [OPTIONS]
smpl create [OPTIONS] <app_name>

Global Options

-? --help           Display help message
-V --version        Print version information

Creating an application

smpl create [OPTIONS] <app_name>

Creates a new Simple application in the directory app_name. The Haskell module for the new application is the CamelCase derivation of app_name. For example, an app with the name test_app would be created with the module nameTestApp.

By default, only minimal functionality is included in generated apps. The following options add additional functionality:

• --templates includes support for rendering templates taken from the “views” subdirectory.
• --postgresql adds support for creating models that serialize to PostgreSQL, as well as convenience methods for accessing a global PostgreSQL connection.
• --sessions adds the ability to interact with a cookie-based session map.
• --all includes all of the above.

All of these options modify the [AppName].Common module by adding various instances for AppSettings type, as well as add dependencies on necessary packages in the app’s cabal file. The --templates flag also changes the default app handler to use render a placeholder view instead of a simple string.

Running an application

smpl server

Running the above command from within an application directory invokeswai-handler-devel to run an application in development mode. In particular, it expects app function from the Application module to have the type signature (Application -> IO()) -> IO () and passes in a continuation to run the Application. The server will watch for changed files, and recompile and reload the application as necessary.

By default, the server runs on port 3000, but this can be changed with -p PORTor --port=PORT. If your app function resides in a different module, use--module=MODULE to specify it.

The server sets the ENV environment variable to development. This can be used by the application that it is running in development mode. For example,simple-postgresql-orm uses this to start a PostgreSQL server in a subdirectory of the app as well as run all migrations when in development mode.