Nim Notes

Examples

Nim WebAssembly App

Building a WebAssembly App

Nim WebAssembly app compiles to WASM for browser use.

Introduction to Nim and WebAssembly

Nim is a statically typed compiled systems programming language that is designed for efficiency, expressiveness, and elegance. It combines successful concepts from mature languages like Python, Ada, and Modula. WebAssembly (WASM) is a binary instruction format for a stack-based virtual machine. It is designed as a portable target for compilation of high-level languages like Nim, enabling deployment on the web for client and server applications.

Setting Up Your Nim Environment

Before you start compiling Nim code to WebAssembly, ensure you have Nim installed on your system. You can install Nim via the official installer:

Creating a Basic Nim Program

Let's start by writing a simple Nim program that we will later compile to WebAssembly. Create a hello.nim file with the following content:

Compiling Nim to WebAssembly

To compile your Nim code to WebAssembly, you will need to use the --backend:js flag. This tells Nim to compile to JavaScript, which is a necessary step because WebAssembly is not yet directly supported by the Nim compiler. Execute the following command:

Once your code is compiled to JavaScript, you can use tools like wasm-pack or emscripten to convert the JavaScript to WebAssembly. For example, using emscripten:

Running Your WebAssembly App in the Browser

Once compiled, you can run your WebAssembly app in the browser. Open the hello.html file generated by emcc in a web browser to see your Nim program in action.

This demonstrates the basic process of converting Nim code into a WebAssembly module, which enables high-performance applications that can run in any modern web browser.

Examples