portal

A clojure tool to navigate through your data.

The portal UI can be used to inspect values of various shapes and sizes. The UX will probably evolve over time and user feedback is welcome!

Apropos Demo

To get an overview of portal, you can watch the following recording of a live demo I gave on Apropos.

Usage

To start a repl with portal, run the clojure cli with:

clj -Sdeps '{:deps {djblue/portal {:mvn/version "0.7.0"}}}'

or for a web clojurescript repl, do:

clj -Sdeps '{:deps {djblue/portal {:mvn/version "0.7.0"}
                    org.clojure/clojurescript {:mvn/version "1.10.758"}}}' \
    -m cljs.main

or for a node clojurescript repl, do:

clj -Sdeps '{:deps {djblue/portal {:mvn/version "0.7.0"}
                    org.clojure/clojurescript {:mvn/version "1.10.758"}}}' \
    -m cljs.main -re node

or for a babashka >=0.2.4 repl, do:

bb -cp `clj -Spath -Sdeps '{:deps {djblue/portal {:mvn/version "0.7.0"}}}'`

or for examples on how to integrate portal into an existing project, look through the examples directory.

API

Try the portal api with the following commands:

;; for node and jvm
(require '[portal.api :as p])

;; for web
;; NOTE: you might need to enable popups for the portal ui to work in the
;; browser.
(require '[portal.web :as p])



(p/open) ; Open a new inspector

(p/tap) ; Add portal as a tap> target

(tap> :hello) ; Start tapping out values

(p/clear) ; Clear all values

(tap> :world) ; Tap out more values

(p/close) ; Close the inspector when done

Portal Atom

For the jvm, bb and web platforms, you can pull values from portal back into your runtime by treating portal as an atom:

(def a (p/open))

; push the value 0 into portal
(reset! a 0)

@a ;=> 0

; inc the current value in portal
(swap! a inc)

@a ;=> 1

The currently selected viewer has the ability to intercept and transform values returned by deref. For example, given a map in portal, you may decide to view it as a coll, and with that viewer selected, deref would return a list of pairs. Not many viewers implement this functionality currently, but expect more to do so in the future.

Options

Themes

There are currently three built-in themes:

• :portal.colors/nord (default)
• :portal.colors/solarized-dark
• :portal.colors/solarized-light

Which can be passed as an option to p/open:

(p/open
  {:portal.colors/theme :portal.colors/nord})

Launcher

By default, when p/open is called, an HTTP server is started on a randomly chosen port. To control this server's port and host, call the p/start function with the following options:

Option	Description	If not specified
:portal.launcher/port	Port used to access UI	random port selected
:portal.launcher/host	Hostname used to access UI	"localhost"

Datafy and Nav

There is one exception to the behavior described above for the UI, datafy and nav. They are extension points defined in clojure to support user defined logic for transforming anything into clojure data and how to traverse it.

For a great overview of datafy and nav, I recommend reading Clojure 1.10's Datafy and Nav by Sean Corfield.

The below will demonstrate the power of datafy and nav by allowing you to traverse the hacker news api! It will produce data tagged with metadata on how to get more data!

(require '[examples.hacker-news :as hn])

(tap> hn/stories)

An interesting use case for nav is allowing users to nav into keywords to produce documentation for that keyword. This really highlights the power behind datafy and nav. It becomes very easy to tailor a browser into the perfect development environment!

CLI Usage

Add a portal alias in ~/.clojure/deps.edn

:portal/cli
{:main-opts ["-m" "portal.main"]
 :extra-deps
 {djblue/portal {:mvn/version "0.7.0"}
  ;; optional json support
  cheshire/cheshire {:mvn/version "5.10.0"}
  ;; optional yaml support
  clj-commons/clj-yaml {:mvn/version "0.7.0"}}}

Then do the following depending on your data format:

cat data | clojure -M:portal/cli <edn|json|transit|yaml>
# or with babashka for faster startup
cat data | bb -cp `clojure -Spath -M:portal/cli` -m portal.main <edn|json|transit|yaml>

I keep the following bash aliases handy for easier CLI use:

alias portal='bb -cp `clojure -Spath -M:portal/cli` -m portal.main'
alias edn='portal edn'
alias json='portal json'
alias transit='portal transit'
alias yaml='portal yaml'

and often use the Copy as cURL feature in the chrome network tab to do the following:

curl ... | transit

Principles

• Support as much of clojure's data as possible
• First class support for async extensibility
• Simple standalone usage without a clojure environment
• Easy theming

Prior Art

• clojure.inspector
• REBL
• punk
• shadow-cljs inspect

Ideas for the Future

• Diff Viewer
  • Any vector pair can be diffed in portal via lambdaisland/deep-diff2
• Markdown Viewer
  • Any string can be viewed as markdown in portal via yogthos/markdown-clj
  • Any hiccup data structure can also be viewed as html
• Chart Viewer
• Node+Edge Graphs Viewer

Development

To start development, do:

make dev

This will start shadow-cljs with a nrepl server. To get going, explore the user.clj namespace.

Formatting

To format source code, do:

make fmt

CI Checks

To run all ci checks, do:

make ci

E2E Testing

To run the e2e tests in the jvm, node and web environments, do:

make e2e

NOTE: these aren't fully automated tests. They depend on a human for verification and synchronization but it beats having to type everything out manually into a repl.

Deployment

To deploy to a release to clojars, bump the version and do:

make set-version deploy