External bindings today, for me, are unintuitive. Here’s a proposal to improve the intuition of the bindings.
Currently it’s something like this:
[the module] external [the declaration + signature] = [the variable]
Can it be improved to this?
[the module + variable] external [the declaration + signature]
Hypothetical examples:
For Browser APIs this could be something like
@browser("document", "getElementById")
external getElementById: (document, string) => Dom.element
For node modules this could be something like
type express
@node("express")
external express: unit => express
@node("express", "get")
external get: (express, string, handler) => unit
For the JS files in the user’s project this could be something like
@local("./student", "default")
external studentName: string
The decorators tell us where the bindings are coming from. @browser would be for Browser APIs, @node would be for node APIs and @local(or maybe @source) would be for JS sources in the project. This would be easier for JS developers to understand, when they’re being introduced to ReScript-JS interop.
Please provide feedback if this sounds interesting.