The effects pattern

In a usual Elm application the update function returns (Model, Cmd Msg). Cmd in Elm is an opaque type so update functions are not easy to test. We cannot easily inspect the commands and see if they are doing the right thing. We cannot also simulate these commands as we don't know what they are doing.

Pattern

The effects pattern allows us to deal with these issues by returning an Effect type instead of Cmd msg from update.

type Effect
	= SaveUser User
	| LogoutUser
	| LoadData
	| ...

update : Msg -> Model -> (Model, List Effect)

At the last possible moment we convert the Effect into actual commands. E.g. in the root module of the app we would have a function like:

runEffects : List Effect -> Cmd Msg

This makes a Elm application a lot more testable. This is approach taken by elm-program-test.

Here is a more detailed blog post about this pattern.