Starting a REPL with Portal data inspector

Portal is a web browser data inspector that can be configures as the tap> source for a project. Any expression surrounded by (tap> ,,,) has its evaluated result sent to Portal.

Portal navigates data in the form of edn, json and transit (with vega graphic support coming soon)

Practicalli Clojure -data browsers section - portal

Portal is simple to add to a REPL as it only requires the Portal library to be added as a depencency.

practicalli/clojure-deps-edn includes several aliases for portal, depending on the type of Clojure project used.

Using Portal

(require '[portal.api :as portal]) once the REPL starts. For inspect/portal-web use (require '[portal.web :as portal]) instead

(portal/open) to open the web based inspector window in a browser.

(portal/tap)to add portal as a tap target (add-tap)

(tap> {:accounts [{:name "jen" :email "jen@jen.com"} {:name "sara" :email "sara@sara.com"}]}) to send data to the portal inspector window (or any other data you wish to send)

(portal/clear) to clear all values from the portal inspector window.

(portal/close) to close the inspector window.

Rich comment block for Portal

  ;; Portal helpers
  ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

  ;; Require the portal namespace
  (require '[portal.api :as portal])

  ;; Open Portal window with solarized-dark theme
  (inspect/open {:portal.colors/theme :portal.colors/solarized-dark})

  ;; Open Portal window with solarized-light theme
  (inspect/open {:portal.colors/theme :portal.colors/solarized-light})

  ;; Clear all values in the portal inspector window
  (inspect/clear)

  ;; Close the portal window
  (inspect/close)

Automatically start Portal

user is the default namespace when a Clojure REPL starts. If there is a user.clj file on the classpath, the code it contains is automatically loaded once the REPL has started.

Create a user namespace in the file dev/user.clj. Require the portal library in the namespace definition, using the alias inspect. Call the inspect/open function to launch Portal in a browser tab. Call the inpect/tap to add portal as the tap> source for the project (there can only be one tap> source)

(ns user
  (:require
     [portal.api :as inspect]))

;; Start Portal
;; Open a portal inspector window using default nord theme
(inspect/open {:portal.colors/theme :portal.colors/solarized-light})

;; Add portal as a tap> target
(inspect/tap)

Include the dev directory when starting the REPL and the dev/user.clj code will be loaded. The :env/dev alias from practicalli/clojure-deps-edn adds dev directory to the classpath.

clojure -M:env/dev:middleware/cider-clj