Hop and HipHop : Multitier Web Orchestration

TL;DR

This paper introduces HipHop, a domain-specific language extending the Hop platform, enabling modular, event-based process orchestration for complex web applications with reactive behaviors.

Contribution

It presents HipHop, a novel language based on Esterel's reactive model, adapted for dynamic web applications within the Hop platform.

Findings

Demonstrates HipHop's ability to handle web application dynamicity

Shows modular construction of complex Hop applications

Validates the approach with a music player example

Abstract

Rich applications merge classical computing, client-server concurrency, web-based interfaces, and the complex time- and event-based reactive programming found in embedded systems. To handle them, we extend the Hop web programming platform by HipHop, a domain-specific language dedicated to event-based process orchestration. Borrowing the synchronous reactive model of Esterel, HipHop is based on synchronous concurrency and preemption primitives that are known to be key components for the modular design of complex reactive behaviors. HipHop departs from Esterel by its ability to handle the dynamicity of Web applications, thanks to the reflexivity of Hop. Using a music player example, we show how to modularly build a non-trivial Hop application using HipHop orchestration code.