/common-lisp-web-app

Common Lisp web app example

Primary LanguageCommon Lisp

Common Lisp web app example

An example of how to build a modern web application with Common Lisp.

Design decisions

These tenets reflect my personal preferences and are not intended to be taken as universal best practices.

  • Use Common Lisp as much as possible Use technologies conducive to writing as much of the application as possible in Common Lisp:

    • HTML - Use the Spinneret package to write HTML as s-expressons.
    • CSS - Use Tailwind for inline styles.
    • JavaScript - Use HTMX and Hyperscript for client-side interactivity and network requests.

  • Reproducible builds and portable environment Use nix flakes to provide a portable build process, development environment and Docker images for release.

Usage

Connect to a REPL with your prefered IDE and run the following, ensuring that the REPL working directory is set to the project root:

(asdf:load-system 'cl-web-app-example)
(cl-web-app-example:main)

The server will listen on port 5000.

Start a Tailwind watch process with tailwindcss -w -i ./tailwind.css -o public/tailwind.css to monitor changes in Lisp source and regenerate the stylesheet.

The nix flake also provides some helper scripts:

  • run-server - Run the server.
  • run-tests - Run unit tests.
  • docker-build - Build a docker image of the server.
  • docker-run - Run the server in the container.