End-to-end Type-Safety with Your Own API Spec DSL

This talk offers a deep dive into the creation of a custom Domain-Specific Language (DSL) for HTTP API specifications, focusing on achieving end-to-end type safety targeting TypeScript client applications with Go/Rust/OCaml backends. I’ll share my experiences and choices in developing this DSL in OCaml, highlighting its design principles and challenges encountered.

Key discussion points include the necessity of type safety across software layers, DSL design strategies, and the detailed process of building and integrating the DSL. I’ll cover some practical challenges and solutions in DSL development, considering aspects like type inference, schema validation, and automatic code generation for the backend routes and the client-side bindings.

Sabine Schmaltz

Twitter: @sabine_s_

Sabine Schmaltz is team lead at Tarides and a maintainer of the official website of the OCaml programming language. After receiving a Ph.D. in 2013 from Saarland university, she became a stay-at-home mother interested in web application and database development until she joined Tarides to work on making OCaml a mainstream programming language.