Tools: Hh_server

The Hack server works behind the scenes to keep your codebase in constant sync for the hh_client typechecker. However, the serverhh_server can also be used for some primary standalone functionality as well.

If you want to see all the options available to hh_server, see the help via hh_server --help.

Check and Exit

If you want to typecheck a file or a directory of files without the overhead of a constant server running combined with hh_client, you can do a quick and dirty check with hh_server.

hh_server --check <path> 

Like with running hh_client, you must ensure that the root of your path has an empty .hhconfig file.

Specify a dot . to represent checking the current path.

Automatic Type Annotations

hh_server provides a mode where you can take a Hack file or project of Hack files and automatically add type annotations to those files.

NOTE: This only works on <?hh files.

hh_server --convert <path to files to convert> <path to top level of project>

Many times the two paths are the same. However, this does give you the flexibility of converting only a subset of a project. Normally, the path to the top level of the project has the .hhconfig.

This process annotates with soft type hints via @. This is because the annotation is far from perfect and we would rather have warnings thrown rather than fatal at runtime.

For example, the following unannotated Hack file:

<?hh

function foo($x) {
  if ($x + 3 < 10) {
    return false;
  }
  return true;
}

function bar($y) {
  if ($y) {
    return "Hi";
  }
  return null;
}

might be converted to:

<?hh

function foo($x): @bool {
  if ($x + 3 < 10) {
    return false;
  }
  return true;
}

function bar($y): @?string {
  if ($y) {
    return "Hi";
  }
  return null;
}