Data expansion alternatives and idioms

[Steve Buikhuizen]

In various projects and presentations there are "terse" data structures being expanded into full forms. Examples are:

• Pedestal "terse" routes : using protocols called ExpandableRoutes
• Vase schema literals : EDN reader literals
  
• Yada routes : I haven't used it so unsure of the technique

and I'm sure there are many more. 

There are also techniques mentioned in blogs using "Data Macros" using Schema and now Spec where terse data is conformed and then transformed into longer forms.

I'm trying to understand the pros and cons of each of these techniques so I thought I'd put it out to the community. Maybe this could accelerate the convergence towards an

idiomatic technique that we can all reach for when we need it.

If you have used any of these (or others) what have you learned? 

[Steve Buikhuizen]

I wanted to understand the techniques used for DSL expansion so I did a talk at the Sydney Clojure Meetup on it. Slides are here if you are interested.

http://tiny.cc/data-macros 

[Steve Buikhuizen]

After thinking this technique through, I realised that Datomic schema is a great candidate for s/conform. 

Here's an example https://gist.github.com/stevebuik/17ed50824f1bb814fab9e556a37cf18a

Happy to hear feedback...