Overview of Ballerina 0.990.3

Ballerina 0.990.3 is a release iteration done based on the 0.990 language specification. It includes improvements on standard library modules, extensions, tooling, and language syntax.

Compatibility and Support

The record rest-fields descriptor should now be followed by a semi colon.

type Person record {
    string name;
    string...;
};

Constrained JSON is no longer supported. The stamp() or convert() methods can be used instead depending on the requirement.
Binary integer literals are no longer supported.
Use of var in the left hand side, with iterable operations ending with map() or filter() operations is disallowed.

int[] numbers = [-5, -3, 2, 7, 12];

// The following now results in a compilation error.
var filtered = numbers.filter(function (int i) returns boolean {
    return i >= 0;
});

Improvements

Language & Runtime

In Ballerina, floating point types (float and decimal) adheres to the IEEE754-2008 standard. Hence, floating point types accommodate NaN and Infinity concepts. Now, along with the float type, decimal type also supports NaN and Infinity concepts.

Dividing a number by zero will no longer result in a panic situation. Rather, it will result in infinity(+/-) for all non-zero real numbers and NaN. Now, in addition to this, the decimal type supports three built-in functions namely isNaN(), isInfinite(), and inFinite() to check whether a given number is NaN, Infinity, or a finite number.

Standard Library

Now, the type time:Time, which represents an instance of time with the associated timezone is a record type (not an object type). Member functions of the previous time:Time object are now provided as utility functions.
Support for using the optional configuration for client authentication in SSL.
The SimpleDurableTopicSubscriber, SimpleQueueReceiver, SimpleQueueSender, SimpleTopicPublisher, and SimpleTopicSubscriber were removed from the JMS API. The initialization API of the TopicPublisher, TopicSubscriber, DurableTopicSubscriber, QueueReceiver, and QueueSender has been modified to support all simple use cases as well.
Support on WebSub Hub persistence.
Basic auth support for WebSub Hub.
Ballerina crypto standard library is reorganized to enhance the extensibility of the library and to increase reusability across other standard libraries.
Now, the crypto standard library provides RSA-signing capabilities in addition to hashing operations, HMAC generation, and CRC32B checksum generation.
Instead of returning Hex encoded string values, crypto operations now return byte[] (byte array). This allows users to consume raw bytes as well as to use the newly added encoding standard library, to get string values encoded using different encoding algorithms.
Also, the crypto standard library now provides the crypto:KeyStore, crypto:PrivateKey, and crypto:PublicKey records. These are usable across other standard libraries to represent key stores, private keys, and public keys.
Ballerina encoding standard library provides functions to perform the following:
Encode byte[] (byte arrays) to string using different encoding algorithms.
Decode string values into byte[] (byte array) using different decoding algorithms.
The byteArrayToString function that can be used to encode byte[] into a string using a selected character encoding.

IDEs & Language Server

Update LSP version to v3.13.0.
Markup Content Support on Signature Help, Hover Provider, and Completion.
Code Lens support.

IDEA Plugin

Ballerina code folding support.
Spell-checking support.
Improved Signature Help.
Minor bug fixes and improvements.

Compiler Extensions

Support on AWS Lambda functions.

Performance Results

Refer Ballerina performance test results available in the repository.

Bug Fixes

Refer Github milestone issues to view bug fixes.

Getting Started

You can download the Ballerina distributions, try samples, and read the documentation at https://ballerina.io. You can also visit the Quick Tour to get started.

We encourage you to report issues, improvements, and suggestions at the Ballerina Github Repository.

Swan Lake release notes

1.2.x release notes

1.1.x release notes

1.0.x. release notes

0.9.x release notes