When comparing Happstack Lite vs Snap, the Slant community recommends Happstack Lite for most people. In the question“What are the best Haskell web frameworks for building RESTful web services?” Happstack Lite is ranked 4th while Snap is ranked 7th. The most important reason people chose Happstack Lite is:
There is extensive documentation and tutorials for Happstack and Happstack Lite available for use. Documentation and tutorials help programmers write their code; with so many options, programmers will have an easy time learning the framework.
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Pros
Pro Has extensive documentation
There is extensive documentation and tutorials for Happstack and Happstack Lite available for use. Documentation and tutorials help programmers write their code; with so many options, programmers will have an easy time learning the framework.
Pro Molded through 7+ years of feedback
Happstack has been around for over seven years. During this time developers used the framework and offered feedback to improve it. As a result, it is stable and unlikely to have major changes. Happstack Lite was created from all of this feedback
Pro Shares all of its components on gitHub
Having open source means that developers can customize the framework and offer suggestions and solutions to the code.
Pro Provides modules for changeable functionality
Snap provides "snaplets". These are self-contained modules of code that provide additional functionality without muddling the core library. Having these resources saves time when developing code.
Cons
Con Handles exceptions poorly
When an exception occurs on the server, the error gets printed. By seeing an error that makes no sense to the user, his experience is negatively impacted. Having a negative experience can mean a user never visits the site again.
Con Allows bad code by not enforcing logic separation
Happstack allows developers to write code for controllers, routing, and models together. Doing so will dirty the code and make maintenance harder.
Con Outdated documentation
The comprehensive Snap documentation is currently outdated (last activity appears to have been 2013), though Snap itself is under active development. Note that this primarily affects tutorials and guides; the API documentation is generated automatically and remains current.