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blaze-html 0.5

After some work here at UHac, I’m releasing a new version of the blaze-html library. It has a number of changes, some of which slightly break compatibility with older versions of the library.

blaze-markup and blaze-svg

A few weeks ago, Deepak Jois emailed me that he would like to create a blaze-html package for SVG. He started doing so by first simply copying the blaze-html code and creating blaze-svg from there.

Obviously, blaze-html and blaze-svg contained a lot of common code, so we (mostly Deepak, he really deserves all credit for this) extracted the shared code into a new blaze-markup package, upon which both packages now depend.

Backwards-incompatible changes

This move introduced some backwards-incompatible changes, which we catch with deprecation warnings in a few places, but there have also been some module changes, which might break your code when you upgrade.

The Text.Blaze module no longer contains an Html type. Instead, it has a Markup type. However, in Text.Blaze.Html, we have

type Html = Markup

so the best way to upgrade is to change every Text.Blaze import into a Text.Blaze.Html import.

Additionally, the renderHtml methods have been renamed to renderMarkup. When you use a renderHtml method, you will see a deprecation warning. The best way to resolve this warning is to import e.g., Text.Blaze.Html.Renderer.Utf8 instead of Text.Blaze.Renderer.Utf8.

Easier creation of custom nodes

blaze-html 0.5 introduces easy creation of custom nodes. In the following snippet, test1 and test2 generate the same HTML:

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
import Text.Blaze.Html (Html)
import Text.Blaze.Html5 (p)
import Text.Blaze.Internal

test1 :: Html
test1 = p "Hello world"

test2 :: Html
test2 = customParent "p" "Hello world"

However, you should void usage of customParent (and customLeaf, customAttribute) whenever possible, which is why they are placed in the Text.Blaze.Internal module. They are much slower than their regular counterparts, and also less safe since they’re vulnerable to typos.

Simple manipulations of the HTML tree

I’ve also decided I will add some very simple manipulations of the HTML tree when needed. For now, a single manipulation contents is included, since another package (to be released in the future) depends on it.

This very fast function takes the text content of the HTML tree, so it is available for rendering. Let’s look at a simple example:

{-# LANGUAGE OverloadedStrings #-}
import Text.Blaze.Html (Html, contents, (!))
import Text.Blaze.Html.Renderer.Utf8 (renderHtml)
import qualified Text.Blaze.Html5 as H
import qualified Text.Blaze.Html5.Attributes as A

test :: Html
test = do
    H.p "Hello "
    H.img ! A.src "foo.png"
    H.p "World!"

-- Renders: <p>Hello </p><img src=\"foo.png\"><p>World!</p>
test1 = renderHtml test

-- Renders "Hello World!"
test2 = renderHtml $ contents test

Installation

You can install the new version just by running

cabal update && cabal install blaze-html

You should definitely contact me if you run into any trouble, I’ll try to get back to you as fast as possible. In the meanwhile, I’m going to enjoy the rest of the Utrecht Hackathon!