Is it possible to write more expressive things?

tyco_sample.scala

import tyco.compiler._

object MyWebsite extends tyco.Site {

  for (page <- Content.allPages)
    page.uri ==> Template.show(page)

  for (file <- Path("stylesheets/*.scss"))
    "/css/"+file.name ==> new TextFile(file) with Sass with CssMinifier
}

Well the arrows are good, but if you want more expressive, you might have to write your own language.

That’s not only the arrows, but all the different ways to handle the different intents of the webmaster:

• The for comprehension (for (page <- content.pages) { ... }) to retrieve the data of the webpages (e.g. from a database) ;
• The way to chain file processors to compile sass files in minified CSS (new TextFile(file) with Sass with CssMinifier) ;

Given this website description you can generate the full website just by calling MyWebsite.compile() (cf my website).

Ok, there are still some noisy characters (namely braces or import statements) but I think the huge benefit of this compromise (an embedded DSL instead of a standalone own language) is that I didn’t need to implement a full compiler. I just wrote the missing delta between scala primitives and my DSL primitives, so that I can reuse the whole scala compiler infrastructure, its type system, etc. It gives me a lot of expression power as long as very high-level abstractions.