-- InternalComponent.hs
data ComponentState = ComponentState ...
instance Default ComponentState where ...
componentFunction :: (MonadState InternalComponentState m) => a -> m a
-- Program.hs
data ProgramState = forall cs. ProgramState {
componentState :: cs,
...
}
newtype MyMonad a = MyMonad { runMyMonad :: StateT ProgramState IO a }
myFunction a = do
s <- get
let cs = componentState s
let (r, cs') = runState (componentFunction a) cs
put $ s { componentState = cs' }
return r
What I want is to be able to use the componentFunction inside of MyMonad (in myFunction, as presented in the example), without being particularly interested in the actual type of the state the component requires. Keeping the component state inside of my own state isn't a requirement, but that's as far as my ability to use state in Haskell goes.
This can really be viewed as an equivalent of an implementation of a stateful interface in another programming language: instantiation of the interface with some implementation provides default state value, and every function called through that interface can modify that state. In any point isn't the user presented with implementation details.
In case it's not clear, the above example fails because the implementation of myFunction can't prove that the record selector provides an appropriate type (because it's an existential); at least that's how I understand it.
You can parametrize ProgramState by the type of the component state(s), e.g. have
data ProgramState cs = ProgramState { componentState :: cs }
This would mean you'll also have to expose the ComponentState type from InternalComponent.hs, but not the constructors. This way you give the type checker something to play with, but don't expose any internals to the users of InternalComponent.
First, I'd suggest to read Combining multiple states in StateT, just to see other available options.
Since in the case of nested states we need to update values inside more complex objects, using lens can make life a lot easier (see also this tutorial). A value of type Lens' s a knows how to reach a particular value of type a inside s and how to modify it (that is, creating a new value of type s that is the same, except for a modified a). Then we can define a helper function
runInside :: (MonadState s m) => Lens' s a -> State a r -> m r
runInside lens s = lens %%= (runState s)
Given a lens and a stateful computation on a, we can lift such a computation to a stateful computation parametrized by s. The library allows us to generate lenses using Template Haskell, for example:
{-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes, TemplateHaskell #-}
import Control.Lens.TH
data ProgramState cs = ProgramState { _componentState :: cs }
$(makeLenses ''ProgramState)
will generate componentState :: Lens' ProgramState cs (actually the generated function will be slightly more more generic). Combining them together we get
runInside componentState :: MonadState (ProgramState a) m => State a r -> m r
Using Typeable we could go even further and create a map that automatically creates or keeps a state for whatever type it is asked for. I'd not recommend this approach in general, as it sort-of avoids Haskell's strong type system checks, but it might be useful in some cases.
{-# LANGUAGE ExistentialQuantification, ScopedTypeVariables, RankNTypes #-}
import Control.Lens
import Control.Lens.TH
import Control.Monad.State
import Data.Map (Map)
import qualified Data.Map as Map
import Data.Typeable
data Something = forall a . Typeable a => Something a
type TypeMap = Map TypeRep Something
We defined a generic untyped container that can hold whatever is Typeable and a map that maps representation of types to their values.
We'll need some class to provide default/starting values:
class Default a where
getDefault :: a
-- just an example
instance Default Int where
getDefault = 0
Finally, we can create a lens that given an arbitrary Typeable type, it focuses on its value in the map by looking up its type representation:
typeLens :: forall t . (Typeable t, Default t) => Lens' TypeMap t
typeLens = lens get set
where
set map v = Map.insert (typeOf v) (Something v) map
get map = case Map.lookup (typeRep (Proxy :: Proxy t)) map of
Just (Something v) | Just r <- cast v -> r
_ -> getDefault
So you could have TypeMap somewhere in your state and let all stateful computations use it, regardless of what state they need.
However, there is a big warning: If two unrelated computations happen to use the same type for their state, they'll share the value with very likely disastrous results! So using explicit records for states of different parts of your computations is going to be much safer.
Related
Let us say I want to make a ADT as follows in Haskell:
data Properties = Property String [String]
deriving (Show,Eq)
I want to know if it is possible to give the second list a bounded and enumerated property? Basically the first element of the list will be the minBound and the last element will be the maxBound. I am trying,
data Properties a = Property String [a]
deriving (Show, Eq)
instance Bounded (Properties a) where
minBound a = head a
maxBound a = (head . reverse) a
But not having much luck.
Well no, you can't do quite what you're asking, but maybe you'll find inspiration in this other neat trick.
{-# language ScopedTypeVariables, FlexibleContexts, UndecidableInstances #-}
import Data.Reflection -- from the reflection package
import qualified Data.List.NonEmpty as NE
import Data.List.NonEmpty (NonEmpty (..))
import Data.Proxy
-- Just the plain string part
newtype Pstring p = P String deriving Eq
-- Those properties you're interested in. It will
-- only be possible to produce bounds if there's at
-- least one property, so NonEmpty makes more sense
-- than [].
type Props = NonEmpty String
-- This is just to make a Show instance that does
-- what you seem to want easier to write. It's not really
-- necessary.
data Properties = Property String [String] deriving Show
Now we get to the key part, where we use reflection to produce class instances that can depend on run-time values. Roughly speaking, you can think of
Reifies x t => ...
as being a class-level version of
\(x :: t) -> ...
Because it operates at the class level, you can use it to parametrize instances. Since Reifies x t binds a type variable x, rather than a term variable, you need to use reflect to actually get the value back. If you happen to have a value on hand whose type ends in p, then you can just apply reflect to that value. Otherwise, you can always magic up a Proxy :: Proxy p to do the job.
-- If some Props are "in the air" tied to the type p,
-- then we can show them along with the string.
instance Reifies p Props => Show (Pstring p) where
showsPrec k p#(P str) =
showsPrec k $ Property str (NE.toList $ reflect p)
-- If some Props are "in the air" tied to the type p,
-- then we can give Pstring p a Bounded instance.
instance Reifies p Props => Bounded (Pstring p) where
minBound = P $ NE.head (reflect (Proxy :: Proxy p))
maxBound = P $ NE.last (reflect (Proxy :: Proxy p))
Now we need to have a way to actually bind types that can be passed to the type-level lambdas. This is done using the reify function. So let's throw some Props into the air and then let the butterfly nets get them back.
main :: IO ()
main = reify ("Hi" :| ["how", "are", "you"]) $
\(_ :: Proxy p) -> do
print (minBound :: Pstring p)
print (maxBound :: Pstring p)
./dfeuer#squirrel:~/src> ./WeirdBounded
Property "Hi" ["Hi","how","are","you"]
Property "you" ["Hi","how","are","you"]
You can think of reify x $ \(p :: Proxy p) -> ... as binding a type p to the value x; you can then pass the type p where you like by constraining things to have types involving p.
If you're just doing a couple of things, all this machinery is way more than necessary. Where it gets nice is when you're performing lots of operations with values that have phantom types carrying extra information. In many cases, you can avoid most of the explicit applications of reflect and the explicit proxy handling, because type inference just takes care of it all for you. For a good example of this technique in action, see the hyperloglog package. Configuration information for the HyperLogLog data structure is carried in a type parameter; this guarantees, at compile time, that only similarly configured structures are merged with each other.
I have several State monad actions. Some of the actions make decisions based on the current state and other input optionally generating result. The two types of actions invoke each other.
I have modeled these two action types with State and StateT Maybe. The following (contrived) example shows my current approach.
{-# LANGUAGE MultiWayIf #-}
import Control.Monad (guard)
import Control.Monad.Identity (runIdentity)
import Control.Monad.Trans.State
type Producer = Int -> State [Int] Int
type MaybeProducer = Int -> StateT [Int] Maybe Int
produce :: Producer
produce n
| n <= 0 = return 0
| otherwise = do accum <- get
let mRes = runStateT (maybeProduce n) accum
if | Just res <- mRes -> StateT $ const (return res)
| otherwise -> do res <- produce (n - 1)
return $ res + n
maybeProduce :: MaybeProducer
maybeProduce n = do guard $ odd n
modify (n:)
mapStateT (return . runIdentity) $
do res <- produce (n - 1)
return $ res + n
I have factored out separating the checks from the actions (thus transforming them into simple State actions) because the check itself is very involved (80% of the work) and provides the bindings needed in the action. I don't want to promote the State actions to StateT Maybe either, because it poses an inaccurate model.
Is there a better or more elegan way that I'm missing? In particular I don't like the mapStateT/runStateT duo, but it seems necessary.
PS: I know the example is actually a Writer, but I used State to better reflect the real case
I don't want to promote the State actions to StateT Maybe either, because it poses an inaccurate model.
What do you mean by "promote"? I can't tell which of these you mean:
Rewrite the definitions of the State actions so that their type is now StateT Maybe, even though they don't rely on Maybe at all;
Use an adapter function that transforms State s a into StateT s Maybe a.
I agree with rejecting (1), but to me that mean either:
Go for (2). One useful tool for this is to use the mmorph library (blog entry).
Rewrite the actions from State s a to use Monad m => StateT s m a.
In the second case, the type is compatible with any Monad m but does not allow the code to assume any specific base monad, so you get the same purity as State s a.
I'd give mmorph a shot. Note that:
State s a = StateT s Identity a;
hoist generalize :: (MFunctor t, Monad m) => t Identity a -> t m a;
And that specializes to hoist generalize :: State s a -> StateT s Maybe a.
EDIT: It's worth nothing that there is an isomorphism between the State s a and forall m. StateT s m a types, given by these inverse functions:
{-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes #-}
import Control.Monad.Morph
import Control.Monad.Trans
import Control.Monad.Trans.State
import Control.Monad.Identity
fwd :: (MFunctor t, Monad m) => t Identity a -> t m a
fwd = hoist generalize
-- The `forall` in the signature forbids callers from demanding any
-- specific choice of type for `m`, which allows *us* to choose
-- `Identity` for `m` here.
bck :: MFunctor t => (forall m. t m a) -> t Identity a
bck = hoist generalize
So the Monad m => StateT s m a and mmorph solutions are, effectively, the same. I prefer using mmorph here, though.
I often end up in a situation where it's very convenient to be using the State monad, due to having a lot of related functions that need to operate on the same piece of data in a semi-imperative way.
Some of the functions need to read the data in the State monad, but will never need to change it. Using the State monad as usual in these functions works just fine, but I can't help but feel that I've given up Haskell's inherent safety and replicated a language where any function can mutate anything.
Is there some type-level thing that I can do to ensure that these functions can only read from the State, and never write to it?
Current situation:
iWriteData :: Int -> State MyState ()
iWriteData n = do
state <- get
put (doSomething n state)
-- Ideally this type would show that the state can't change.
iReadData :: State MyState Int
iReadData = do
state <- get
return (getPieceOf state)
bigFunction :: State MyState ()
bigFunction = do
iWriteData 5
iWriteData 10
num <- iReadData -- How do we know that the state wasn't modified?
iWRiteData num
Ideally iReadData would probably have the type Reader MyState Int, but then it doesn't play nicely with the State. Having iReadData be a regular function seems to be the best bet, but then I have to go through the gymnastics of explicitly extracting and passing it the state every time it's used. What are my options?
It's not hard to inject the Reader monad into State:
read :: Reader s a -> State s a
read a = gets (runReader a)
then you could say
iReadData :: Reader MyState Int
iReadData = do
state <- ask
return (getPieceOf state)
and call it as
x <- read $ iReadData
this would allow you to build up Readers into larger read-only sub-programs and inject them into State only where you need to combine them with mutators.
It's not hard to extend this to a ReaderT and StateT at the top of your monad transformer stack (in fact, the definition above works exactly for this case, just change the type). Extending it to a ReaderT and StateT in the middle of the stack is harder. You basically need a function
lift1 :: (forall a. m0 a -> m1 a) -> t m0 a -> t m1 a
for every monad transformer t in the stack above the ReaderT/StateT, which isn't part of the standard library.
I would recommend wrapping up the State monad in a newtype and defining a MonadReader instance for it:
{-# LANGUAGE GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving #-}
{-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses #-}
{-# LANGUAGE FlexibleContexts #-}
import Control.Applicative
import Control.Monad.State
import Control.Monad.Reader
data MyState = MyState Int deriving Show
newtype App a = App
{ runApp' :: State MyState a
} deriving
( Functor
, Applicative
, Monad
, MonadState MyState
)
runApp :: App a -> MyState -> (a, MyState)
runApp app = runState $ runApp' app
instance MonadReader MyState App where
ask = get
local f m = App $ fmap (fst . runApp m . f) $ get
iWriteData :: MonadState MyState m => Int -> m ()
iWriteData n = do
MyState s <- get
put $ MyState $ s + n
iReadData :: MonadReader MyState m => m Int
iReadData = do
MyState s <- ask
return $ s * 2
bigFunction :: App ()
bigFunction = do
iWriteData 5
iWriteData 10
num <- iReadData
iWriteData num
This is certainly more code that #jcast's solution, but it follows the the tradition of implementing your transformer stack as a newtype wrapper, and by sticking with constraints instead of solidified types you can make strong guarantees about the use of your code while providing maximum flexibility for re-use. Anyone using your code would be able to extend your App with transformers of their own while still using iReadData and iWriteData as intended. You also don't have to wrap every call to a Reader monad with a read function, the MonadReader MyState functions are seamlessly integrated with functions in the App monad.
Excellent answers by jcast and bhelkir, with exactly the first idea I thought of—embedding Reader inside State.
I think it's worthwhile to address this semi-side point of your question:
Using the State monad as usual in these functions works just fine, but I can't help but feel that I've given up Haskell's inherent safety and replicated a language where any function can mutate anything.
That's a potential red flag, indeed. I've always found that State works best for code with "small" states that can be contained within the lifetime of a single, brief application of runState. My go-to example is numbering the elements of a Traversable data structure:
import Control.Monad.State
import Data.Traversable (Traversable, traverse)
tag :: (Traversable t, Enum s) => s -> t a -> t (s, a)
tag i ta = evalState (traverse step ta) init
where step a = do s <- postIncrement
return (s, a)
postIncrement :: Enum s => State s s
postIncrement = do result <- get
put (succ result)
return result
You don't directly say so, but you make it sound you may have a big state value, with many different fields being used in many different ways within a long-lived runState call. And perhaps it does need to be that way for your program at this point. But one technique for coping with this might be to write your smaller State actions so that they only use narrower state types than the "big" one and then embed these into the larger State type with a function like this:
-- | Extract a piece of the current state and run an action that reads
-- and modifies only that piece.
substate :: (s -> s') -> (s' -> s -> s) -> State s' a -> State s a
substate extract replace action =
do s <- get
let (s', a) = runState action (extract s)
put (replace s' s)
return a
Schematic example
example :: State (A, B) Whatever
example = do foo <- substate fst (,b) action1
bar <- substate snd (a,) action2
return $ makeWhatever foo bar
-- Can only touch the `A` component of the state
action1 :: State A Foo
action1 = ...
-- Can only touch the `B` component of the state
action2 :: State B Bar
action2 = ...
Note that the extract and replace functions constitute a lens, and there are libraries for that, which may even already include a function like this.
I'm trying to create an agent based system in Haskell. For this I need to logically separate the agent and environment parts, for example to run using different test and real environments.
Both component types, agent and environment will have lots of stateful stuff going on, so I opted to use monad transformer stacks to build each one. I moved the component interface to a type class, which is implemented by the environment. Monads implementing this type class can be used to complete the whole transformer stack by plugging them into the agent transformer.
I created a working proof of concept, which is posted below.
{-# LANGUAGE MultiParamTypeClasses, FunctionalDependencies, FlexibleContexts,
GeneralizedNewtypeDeriving #-}
module MonadComponents where
import Control.Monad
import Control.Monad.Reader
import Control.Monad.Trans
class Monad m => Environment m v | m -> v where
envAction :: v -> m v
newtype AgentT r v m a = AgentT {unAgentT :: ReaderT r m a}
deriving (Monad, MonadTrans, MonadReader r)
runAgentT :: (Environment m v) => AgentT r v m a -> r -> m a
runAgentT = runReaderT . unAgentT
instance Environment IO Int where
envAction x = do
putStrLn $ "action performed in IO environment " ++ (show x)
return $ x * 2
agentAction :: (Environment m Int) => AgentT Int Int m Int
agentAction = do
x <- ask
lift $ envAction (x+10)
ioAction :: Int -> IO Int
ioAction = runAgentT agentAction
Although this kind of works, I see two problems with my code. First, AgentT itself cannot say that it only accepts Monads which are instances of Environment. That is only forced by the type signature of runAgentT. Second, the deeper a transformer stack gets, the complexer its resultant type after full evaluation can become. For example you need to collect and handle every result of StateT, WriterT, MaybeT, EitherT when they are in the stack at a single point at the end. So there is a location in the resulting program where the separation of components does not exist anymore.
I bet there are many different ways to do this. So, of which other ways can you think to separate side-effecting components via a well defined interface in Haskell?
Is there a sane way to apply a polymorphic function to a value of type Dynamic?
For instance, I have a value of type Dynamic and I want to apply Just to the value inside the Dynamic. So if the value was constructed by toDyn True I want the result to be toDyn (Just True). The number of different types that can occur inside the Dynamic is not bounded.
(I have a solution when the types involved come from a closed universe, but it's unpleasant.)
This is perhaps not the sanest approach, but we can abuse my reflection package to lie about a TypeRep.
{-# LANGUAGE Rank2Types, FlexibleContexts, ScopedTypeVariables #-}
import Data.Dynamic
import Data.Proxy
import Data.Reflection
import GHC.Prim (Any)
import Unsafe.Coerce
newtype WithRep s a = WithRep { withRep :: a }
instance Reifies s TypeRep => Typeable (WithRep s a) where
typeOf s = reflect (Proxy :: Proxy s)
Given that we can now peek at the TypeRep of our Dynamic argument and instantiate our Dynamic function appropriately.
apD :: forall f. Typeable1 f => (forall a. a -> f a) -> Dynamic -> Dynamic
apD f a = dynApp df a
where t = dynTypeRep a
df = reify (mkFunTy t (typeOf1 (undefined :: f ()) `mkAppTy` t)) $
\(_ :: Proxy s) -> toDyn (WithRep f :: WithRep s (() -> f ()))
It could be a lot easier if base just supplied something like apD for us, but that requires a rank 2 type, and Typeable/Dynamic manage to avoid them, even if Data does not.
Another path would be to just exploit the implementation of Dynamic:
data Dynamic = Dynamic TypeRep Any
and unsafeCoerce to your own Dynamic' data type, do what you need to do with the TypeRep in the internals, and after applying your function, unsafeCoerce everything back.