Wasm

[nimbit-software]

I was thinking of making grule available in the browser via wasm.

The main goal would not really be to run the full engine in the browser but more for rule syntax validations and simulations. This would make it easier to create tools for creating rules in a more interactive and safe way.

Any opinions? Suggestions reasons why it doesn't make sense? Or anyone else interested?

[newm4n]

Hi, this could be a great idea. A rule engine running in a browser.
But I still need more example on how or what case that this could be implemented.

[nimbit-software]

So i got the idea from https://github.com/gorules/zen. They are written in rust and but have wasm for some features like expression evaluation and other features.

We use this rule engine for IoT realtime analysis and have a frontend (rudimentrary atm) where the user can put together some basic rules with some predefined operators ( gt, eq etc).

I want to make a more powerful version for powerusers where they can actually use the DSL(GRL) to write more complex rules. I would like to be able to validate the GRL and possibly run simulations. As in pass in a payload (facts) and have them run against the engine.

So my basic idea was to wrap the whole thing in wasm and then expose the relevant apis to allow the engine to be loaded in the browser. This would also allow this package to be used in other languages (Node etc).

My main use would be for running simulations but i can see it going beyond that.

Im happy to help work on this i just wanted to get a feel for it. See if other people share the interest and maybe you have some ideas on how i can get started.

I think tiny-go is out of the question because of some packages that are currently used. But we can always optimize it once its working.

[newm4n]

Well, I just made a very short research regading WASM using GO.

Taken from https://go.dev/wiki/WebAssembly

"Note that you can only compile main packages. Otherwise, you will get an object file that cannot be run in WebAssembly. If you have a package that you want to be able to use with WebAssembly, convert it to a main package and build a binary."

This could mean to flatten the entire Rule Engine into "main". Whild this is possible, I could prove to be very complex. What do you think ?