title: Scripting API layout: docs category: docs order: 13 published: true

Scripting API

This API is only available for figwheel.main 0.1.6 and higher.

Starting Figwheel from the REPL (or Script)

The scripting API isn't quite as general as the command line API. It focuses on creating and managing running build processes.

To use the API you will need to ensure that you have the dependencies and the classpaths sorted out to use figwheel.main. Then you will need to require the figwheel.main.api namespace and call the figwheel.main.api/start function.

Let's assume we have a dev.cljs.edn build file and we want to start Figwheel from the Clojure REPL. You can start the dev build with a REPL as follows:

$ clj
Clojure 1.9.0
user=> (require 'figwheel.main.api)
nil
user=> (figwheel.main.api/start "dev")
;; ... Figwheel startup output ommitted ...
ClojureScript 1.10.238
cljs.user=>

As you can see this starts a Figwheel build process along with a ClojureScript REPL.

If you want to start a Figwheel build without a REPL you will need to ensure that the :mode option is :serve. You can do this in the metadata in the build file or you can supply a replacement for the figwheel-main.edn config options like so:

$ clj
user=> (figwheel.main.api/start {:mode :serve} "dev")
[Figwheel] Compiling build dev to "target/public/cljs-out/dev-main.js"
[Figwheel] Successfully compiled build dev to "target/public/cljs-out/dev-main.js" in 0.782 seconds.
[Figwheel] Watching and compiling paths: ("src" "devel") for build - dev
[Figwheel] Starting Server at http://localhost:9500
2018-08-06 17:53:26.155:INFO::main: Logging initialized @15707ms
Opening URL http://localhost:9500
nil
user=>

As you can see this starts the Figwheel build process, launches a server and does not launch a ClojureScript REPL, instead it returns you to the Clojure REPL so you can continue interacting with your Clojure process.

Now that you have the dev Figwheel build running in the background, you can now use the rest of the Scripting API. For example, you can launch a ClojureScript REPL attached to the running dev build process like so:

;; in the Clojure REPL after you have started the "dev" build
user=> (figwheel.main.api/cljs-repl "dev")

This will start a REPL into the running dev build. You can quit the REPL via :cljs/quit and then restart it by calling figwheel.main.api/cljs-repl again.

REPL switching example

For this example to work, one will need to set up the normal figwheel dependencies along with com.bhauman/rebel-readline-cljs.

We'll start off by starting a Rebel Readline Clojure REPL.

$ clojure -m rebel-readline.main
user=>

Assuming that we already have a build set up in dev.cljs.edn and a background build defined in admin.cljs.edn.

We can start both of these builds running with:

user=> (require '[figwheel.main.api :as fig])
nil
user=> (fig/start {:mode :serve} "dev" "admin")

Now we'll start a REPL for the dev build:

user=> (fig/cljs-repl "dev")
;; .. figwheel REPL startup output omitted ...
cljs.user=> (js/console.log "hey")
nil

There are a couple of things to notice at this point. If you check the console of the browser window that the dev application is running in you will notice that the word "hey" is printed out. You should also notice that your ClojureScript REPL is utilizing Rebel Readline.

You can now quit the dev REPL and launch a REPL into admin.

cljs.user=> :cljs/quit
nil
;; returns us to the Clojure REPL prompt
user=> (fig/cljs-repl "admin")
;; .. figwheel REPL startup output omitted ...
cljs.user=> 

We've successfully switched between ClojureScript REPLs for our builds all the while staying in a Rebel Readline environment.

API Docs

{% include main-api-docs.md %}