Interactive user experiences on the web are becoming the norm. Client-side programs are becoming more complicated and have to deal with event handling, reading HTML document state and updating the interface. In this paper we propose a declarative language that supports these three facets of client-side browser development declaratively and provides a programming model where complex interfaces can be written using simple programming techniques such as records, functions and recursion.
The polymorphic RPC calculus allows programmers to write succinct multitier programs using polymorphic location constructs. However, until now it lacked an implementation. We develop an experimental programming language based on the polymorphic RPC calculus. We introduce a polymorphic Client-Server (CS) calculus with the client and server parts separated. In contrast to existing untyped CS calculi, our calculus is not only able to resolve polymorphic locations statically, but it is also able to do so dynamically. We design a type-based slicing compilation of the polymorphic RPC calculus into this CS calculus, proving type and semantic correctness. We propose a method to erase types unnecessary for execution but retaining locations at runtime by translating the polymorphic CS calculus into an untyped CS calculus, proving semantic correctness.
The RPC calculus is a simple semantic foundation for multi-tier programming languages such as Links in which located functions can be written for the client-server model. Subsequently, the typed RPC calculus is designed to capture the location information of functions by types and to drive location type-directed slicing compilations. However, the use of locations is currently limited to monomorphic ones, which is one of the gaps to overcome to put into practice the theory of RPC calculi for client-server model. This paper proposes a polymorphic RPC calculus to allow programmers to write succinct multi-tier programs using polymorphic location constructs. Then the polymorphic multi-tier programs can be automatically translated into programs only containing location constants amenable to the existing slicing compilation methods. We formulate a type system for the polymorphic RPC calculus, and prove its type soundness. Also, we design a monomorphization translation together with proofs on its type and semantic correctness for the translation.
With multi-tier programming languages, programmers can specify the locations of code to run in order to reduce development efforts for the web-based client-server model where programmers write client and server programs separately and test the multiple programs together. The RPC calculus, one of the foundations of those languages by Cooper and Wadler, has the feature of symmetric communication in programmer's writing arbitrarily deep nested client-server interactions. However, the existing research only considers dynamically typed locations. We propose a typed RPC calculus where locations are tracked in type-level. A new located type system paves the way for a theory of RPC calculi for the client-server model.
(In the following papers published in SCP2020 and PPDP2021, the typed RPC calculus will be enhanced with polymorphic locations and a type-based slicing compilation.)