The JSON Survival Kit

I’ve been working on this Elm JSON Decoder for days and I haven’t made any progress… send help!

You’re starting to feel like you’re lost in the desert, and your camel–I mean, Decoder–will never do what you want.

The docs don’t help you find your way, either. Nobody really has a JSON body like ["alice", "bob", "charlie"] … how is that useful? You have to know the docs for them to be useful. And what’s up with all those little int s and string s, anyway?

You know JSON can be easy, you work with it in JavaScript all the time! But how can you get from here to there in Elm?

Know Where You’re Going

What if you could see how all those little JSON decoders worked together in the bigger picture? You’d know right away how to use them on your own! You’d find your way through the desert, and maybe even find a faster way than before.

You could get back to working on the problem you set out to solve. You’d finish your app in record time, and with all the benefits of Elm: the type safety, super helpful compiler errors, speed, and correctness.

If you could only get it working, it would feel so good to finally ship.

Then Again… Boilerplate

But even when you finally find your way, writing boilerplate upon boilerplate, it turns out your Decoder is super brittle. Even the smallest schema change will blow it over like a house made of sticks.

The code compiles, but when you open it in your browser you get… nothing? Was all that time and energy a waste?

Surely there’s a faster way to do this, maybe with fewer wasted keystrokes?

Stop Writing The Same Code Over And Over

You could write expressive, stable decoders… once! Your decoders would adapt to change like a reed in the wind, rather than like a brick through a window.

When there was a breaking change you’d get relevant, friendly errors instead of the dreaded blank screen. The Elm compiler and your types would light your way!

It’s easy to get stuck when you’re trying to put all the puzzle pieces together, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

The JSON Survival Kit: See The Bigger Picture

Find your way with The JSON Survival Kit, a short ebook that shows you the bigger picture of Elm’s Json.Decode . You’ll learn how to piece the JSON decoder API together in a way that works for your situation so you can get back to solving your problems. Get step-by-step instructions for avoiding boilerplate, write decoders so adapting to new data is a breeze, and finally understand why the time and effort is worth it (hint: it so is.) Finish your JSON Decoder and ship your app.

Just grab your schema and buy The JSON Survival Kit. You’ll be done in a snap, and never get stuck again.