When comparing Happstack Lite vs Scotty, 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 Scotty is ranked 5th. 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.
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
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 Easy to pick up and use
A simple framework cuts development time and costs. To get started, developers only need to understand how to write routing and actions.
Pro Available on gitHub
Having the source code on gitHub means developers can easily suggest improvements and error reports. They also have a community that can help with any problems that come up.
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 Lacks features due to its small size
Since Scotty is small, it does not contain some features that a complex web application may need. Anything that Scotty can't provide must be either found or written, costing developers.