Sierra Stuart - ClojureScript: up and running

This book is both a how-to guide for using ClojureScript and a tutorial on the language itself. We have arranged the chapters in what we felt was the best order for someone who is completely new to the language but wants to get started quickly. If you already know Clojure or ClojureScript and just want advice on development tools and workflow, focus on Chapters 2, 3, 7, 9, and 10. If you want to dive into the language right away, start with Chapters 4 through 6 before reading about the development process.

In this chapter, we lay out the motivation for ClojureScript: why it exists and what role it is designed to fill.

In this chapter, we work through a complete, albeit trivial, ClojureScript application. We introduce Leiningen, the lein-cljsbuild plug-in, and how to use ClojureScript in an HTML page. We save explanation for later chapters, but this chapter should be enough to get your first ClojureScript code up and running.

This chapter goes into the ClojureScript compiler in detail, explaining how it works, most of the configuration options it supports, and how it integrates with the Google Closure Compiler.

Chapters 4 through 6 cover the basics of the ClojureScript language itself. Although not a complete guide to every corner of the language, they cover most of the features that are required for everyday programming. Because ClojureScript and Clojure are so similar, we recommend books about Clojure to learn more about the language.

This chapter introduces the essential syntax and control structures of the ClojureScript language including functions, bindings, scope, and interoperation with JavaScript.

This chapter covers the primitive and composite data structures of ClojureScript, and shows how to work with them in programs. In particular, it explains ClojureScripts approach to immutability and state management.

This chapter introduces Lazy Sequences, an important data structure in ClojureScript that makes up a substantial portion of the standard library.

This chapter covers namespaces as a feature of the ClojureScript language and also explains how files are organized in ClojureScript projects. We go into detail about how the Google Closure Compiler affects the use of libraries in ClojureScript projects, and provide a detailed flowchart for determining how best to use any particular library.

This chapter introduces macros, an advanced language feature provided by ClojureScript.

This chapter covers a variety of alternative methods for working with ClojureScript code apart from the workflow we have used elsewhere in the book. We demonstrate some tools packaged with ClojureScript itself, including command-line compilation scripts and the ClojureScript Browser REPL (bREPL).

This chapter briefly demonstrates what can be achieved by combining Clojure and ClojureScript in the same application.

The following typographical conventions are used in this book: