[Haskell-cafe] How to implement this? A case for scoped record labels?

[wren ng thornton]

ntupel at googlemail.com wrote:
> This however does not work because record selectors have module scope,
> so the compiler will complain that channel et. al. are defined
> multiple times. As a workaround I could put each type into its own
> module, but at least GHC requires a file per module (which is *very*
> inconvenient IMO). If we would have scoped labels (e.g. like proposed
> here: http://legacy.cs.uu.nl/daan/pubs.html#scopedlabels) it seems
> like it would have been straightforward.
> 
> So certainly I am missing something and there is a better way to
> design this. Hence this e-mail. I welcome any advice how this would
> best be done in Haskell with GHC.

One alternative is to use Haskell's support for ad-hoc overloading. 
Define a typeclass for each selector (or group of selectors that must 
always occur together) which is polymorphic in the record type. Combine 
this with the separate constructor types to get something like:

     data HandshakeRequest = HandshakeRequest String ...
     data HandshakeResponse = HandshakeResponse String Bool ...
     ...
     data BayeuxMessage
         = HSReq HandshakeRequest
         | HSRes HandshakeResponse
         ...

     class BayeuxChannel r where
         channel :: r -> String
     instance BayeuxChannel HandshakeRequest where
         channel (HandshakeRequest ch ...) = ch
     instance BayeuxChannel HandshakeResponse where
         channel (HandshakeResponse ch _ ...) = ch
     ...
     class BayeuxSuccessful r where
         successful :: r -> Bool
     ...


It's not pretty, but it gets the job done. Many people decry this as 
improper use of typeclasses though (and rightly so). A better approach 
would probably be to use GADTs or the new data families which give a 
sort of dual of typeclasses (typeclasses give a small set of functions 
for a large set of types; GADTs give a large set of functions for a 
small set of types[0]). Someone more familiar with those approaches 
should give those versions.

If you want to be able to set the fields as well as read them then the 
classes should be more like lenses than projectors. For instance, 
this[1] discussion on Reddit. The two obvious options are a pair of 
setter and getter functions: (Whole->Part, Whole->Part->Whole); or a 
factored version of the same: Whole->(Part, Part->Whole).

You should also take a look at the data-accessor packages[2][3] which 
aim to give a general solution to the lens problem. Also take a look at 
hptotoc[4], the Haskell implementation of Google's Protocol Buffers 
which has many similar problems to your Bayeaux protocol. In general, 
protocols designed for OO are difficult to translate into non-OO languages.



[0] http://blog.codersbase.com/tag/gadt/
[1] 
http://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/86oc3/yet_another_proposal_for_haskell_the_ever_growing/c08f4bp
[2] http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/data-accessor
[3] 
http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/data-accessor-template
[4] http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/hprotoc

-- 
Live well,
~wren