Bulbs/Clojure

[James Thornton]

Hi -

I've been working on Bulbs/Clojure the last few weeks and have been using this as an opportunity to learn the language. 

Clojure's functional style has taken a bit to get used to, but I'm starting to get a feel for it and like it a lot. 

I'm playing around with different designs, and right now I'm defining graph as a higher-order function that returns an anonymous function with an instance of the server's client object in its scope (i.e. either the Neo4j Server or Rexster client)...

(ns bulbs.neo4jserver.graph
  (:use [bulbs.neo4jserver.client :only [create-client]]))

(defn graph
  "Returns a function that takes a function and its args."
  [& [config]]
  (use '[bulbs.element :only (vertex edge)])
  (alias 'bulbs 'bulbs.element)
  (let [client (create-client config)]
    (fn [func element & args]
      (apply func (assoc element :client client) args))))

You pass in functions to graph which are then dispatched on the argument type (e.g. either "vertex" or "edge")...

;; Bulbs/Clojure example

user> (use '[bulbs.neo4jserver.graph :only (graph)])
user> (def g (graph))
user> (def james (g bulbs/create vertex {:name "James"}))
user> (def julie (g bulbs/create vertex {:name "Julie"}))
user> (g bulbs/create edge james :knows julie)


I'm trying to keep the interface close to Bulbs/Python -- here's a comparison...

# Bulbs/Python example

>>> from bulbs.neo4jserver import Graph
>>> g = Graph()
>>> james = g.vertices.create(name="James")
>>> julie = g.vertices.create(name="Julie")
>>> g.edges.create(james, "knows", julie)


I'll post the 0.1 to GitHub in a few days. If there are any Clojure gurus on the list, let me know -- feedback welcome!

- James