Hack's documentation and marketing is largely focused on how easy it is to migrate an existing PHP project; while this is a unique advantage of Hack, there isn't much guidance on how new projects should be designed.

Until late 2015, the Hack and HHVM documentation site was a fork of PHP's own documentation site. This had many shortcomings, and ultimately we decided that the best approach would be something custom. As most of the public Hack code at that point was toy examples, we decided to also make the site itself open, and start investigating the greenfield problems.

There are 3 basic approaches to 'library code' in Hack if there isn't already a Hack version:

Use a PHP library, without typechecker support Use a PHP library, and add HHI files so that Hack understands it Write something new

The Hack/HHVM site uses a mix of all three, though mostly #2 and #3.

Using a PHP library without typechecker support

While Hack code can call PHP code, the typechecker doesn't understand it; it won't tell you about the kinds of mistakes it usually finds, and you can't use it in strict mode, or in any typechecked code if you have assume_php=false in your .hhconfig . Despit this, it can still be the best approach if a library is only used in a very small number of places or in places that aren't type-checked, such as pseudomains in your entrypoint. For example, the Hack/HHVM documentation uses Zend Diactoros to create PSR-7 objects from the entrypoint:

Using a PHP library with HHI files

An HHI file is basically Hack declarations without implementations; the existing PHP implementation is used by the runtime, but the typechecker (and IDEs like Nuclide) are able to use the declarations to provide full functionality. The suitability of this approach depends on the complexity of the library, if the API design is suitable for static typing, and how much your code interacts with it.

The API of FastRoute makes this approach a nearly-perfect fit, especially since the introduction of shapes and the classname<T> type, and as the project includes an HHI file, the typechecker fully understands the API. For example, Hack (and your IDE) understand that FastRoute\simpleDispatcher() 's first parameter takes a FastRoute\RouteCollector , and if you specify a routeParser in the options array, it should be the name of a FastRoute\RouteParser subclass:

PHPUnit's API isn't type-safe (from Hack's perspective), however there are still benefits to using an HHI file:

Your unit tests can be in strict mode ( <?hh // strict )

) The typechecker can tell you if you typo/miss-remember, eg $this->assertEquals() vs $this->assertEqual()

vs Hack-aware IDEs like Nuclide can offer standard functionality like autocomplete

While PHPUnit does not include an HHI file, Simon Welsh has created 91-carriage/phpunit-hhi, a Composer-installable package containing corresponding HHI files.

There are now pure-Hack alternatives such as Isaac Leinweber's HackUnit; while these have advantages like support for async, at the time they were much less mature, and familiarity is an advantage in itself.

PSR-7

We decided to use the (at-the-time) new PSR-7 standard for low-level request/response objects; these are exposed in quite a few places, so I created an an HHI package; in process, we discovered several design decisions in the API that make it not particularly suitable for Hack - for example:

Unknown types RequestInterface::getRequestTarget() is documented as returning a string, however withRequestTarget() can accept anything, and getRequestTarget() must return it verbatim - so, the return type of getRequestTarget() is actually unknown. Union types Hack supports nullable types, but not general union types; ServerRequestInterface::getParsedBody() returns null|array|object , so isn't well-suited to Hack. The presence of object is also unusual: PSR-7 is intended to encourage interoperability, however this leaves some core functionality as implementation-defined.

We were able to minimize these problems by assuming the worst - making the broadest possible assumptions about what we might be returned, and the narrowest about what can be passed. This did influence later decisions about creating HHIs vs new Hack implementations.

Write something new

We took this approach when we needed truly new functionality, or when we wanted more 'Hack-like' APIs; this would generally mean:

Fully-typeable APIs (eg no union types)

First-class support for XHP

First-class support for async/await

No usage of __call() , __get() , or similar

In particular, async support is something that needs to be designed into a framework from the beginning to have full benefits: the entire request/script needs to be structured as a dependency tree, with every node on the tree being awaitable if there is any chance of a descendent node needing to do any asyncronous operations (eg data fetching). Ultimately this means that existing PHP frameworks are not suitable; this led to us creating:

A request-routing micro-framework (on top of FastRoute)

A hierarchy of WebController classes